There are no men in Claysoot. There are boys - but every one of them vanishes at midnight on his eighteenth birthday. The ground shakes, the wind howls, a blinding light descends... and he's gone. They call it the Heist. Gray Weathersby's eighteenth birthday is mere months away, and he's prepared to meet his fate - until he finds a strange note from his mother and starts to question everything he's been raised to accept: the Council leaders and their obvious secrets, the Heist itself, and what lies beyond the Wall that surrounds Claysoot - a structure that no one can cross and survive.

Climbing the Wall is suicide, but what comes after the Heist could be worse. Should he sit back and wait to be taken - or risk everything on the hope of the other side?