Twelve-year-old Prue lives in Portland, Oregon with her parents and baby brother Mac. Prue has taken Mac along while she does some errands. When she emerges from the local library, she sees a group of five crows lifting her brother out of his wagon and up into the air. Dozens of other crows have massed alongside as escorts. “Her baby brother, her responsibility, was being abducted by birds,” Meloy writes. “What did they plan on doing with him?” (1-2).

Prue frantically follows on her bicycle until she reaches a cliff at the edge of town: “Here at the eastern side of the Willamette River was a natural border between the tight-knit community of St. Johns and the riverbank, a three-mile length of cliff simply called the bluff” (11). On the other side of the river is a no-man’s land called the Industrial Wastes. Prue watches in horror as the crows continue their flight to the woods beyond. They have entered the Impassable Wilderness.

Prue recalls asking her father why all the maps of Portland have an area marked “I.W.” for Impassable Wilderness. He explains:

There are places in the world where people just don’t end up living.