Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, the site of one of the greatest battles in history; now home to a sinister conspiracy dating back to the founding of the United States itself and reaching into the deepest and most secretive levels of the government; a conspiracy that threatens to plunge the world into a chasm of domination and nuclear devastation. Muriel Peterson's grandfather is killed in 1976. Four years later, the guidance counselor at her new junior high school asks if she is a good American and offers to free her from the boredom of being a preteen in her small Pennsylvania town. He asks her to spy on a family of Russian immigrants suspected of stealing secrets for the KGB. She reluctantly accepts and begins to infiltrate the life of that fellow student and his family. Murry slowly uncovers a conspiracy by a rogue Soviet general and someone inside the CIA to place sleeper agents throughout the country in an effort to start a war with the Soviet Union and replace the US government. Along the way, she discovers dark secrets long hidden by her handler, a mysterious FBI agent and even her deceased grandfather leading to a much larger conspiracy that threatens to pull a dark veil across the face of the entire world. All this while she attempts to deal with the pressures of growing up in a dysfunctional family, social isolation and young love.