Sarah Davenport is sixteen years old when her life is tragically altered. She will never show her face in public again, but she will not be forgotten... July 16, 1945: An innocent trek through the desert erupts into a nightmare for twenty-two people when an atomic bomb ruptures the dawn. Beneath the surface of this world-changing event, science continues to advance in the private lives of the military's classified victims, who survive exposure to nuclear radiation only to become prisoners and medical test subjects in a clandestine government facility that lies buried under a mountain. During two years of captivity their bodies heal and grow strong, while faith, hope, and love forge unbreakable bonds. Their relentless quest for freedom leads to one solitary gamble on an uncertain source that may yet exact a greater price than they would have imagined. From the Trinity Test to the Roswell Incident, from Operation Blau to Operation Crossroads, prominent events are a curtain behind which a family of ordinary people live extraordinary lives apart from a world of individuals who are fascinated with technology, impatient for medical advancements, and unaware that the aliens they have encountered are not aliens after all.