after it destroyed the Israelite kingdom of Judah, the mighty Babylonian Empire is about to be conquered in its turn. Two boys are swept into the turmoil when one of them, the Babylonian Gimillu, burns the barley field of his Judean schoolboy foe Zakaryah. The cascading disasters that ensue plunge both boys into a terrifying race for survival. They're accompanied by a mysterious dark-skinned girl named Danna, and by Zakaryah's strange little sister Hannah. Unless the boys can set aside their hatred, the four of them will never survive their desperate flight. And if six-year-old Hannah has her way, that flight will lead them to a desolate backwater of the empire, to a ruined city called Jerusalem.