Kweku Ashworth is a child of the cataclysm, born on a sailboat to parents fleeing the devastation. Growing up in a world forever changed, his only connection to the events that set the earth on its course to disaster are the stories his step-father, now long-dead, recorded in his manuscript, THE FORCING. But there are huge gaps in the story that his mother steadfastly refuses to speak of, even thirty years later. When he discovers evidence that she has tried to cover up the truth, he knows that it is time to find out for himself. Determined to learn what really happened during his mother's escape from the concentration camp to which she and his father were banished, and their subsequent journey halfway around the world, Kweku and his young family set out on a perilous voyage across a devastated planet.