 Alice is 8 years old. She is living with her parents in a remote area of northern China; her mother is home-schooling her and she has access to plenty of technology as well as the great outdoors. Mostly she is bored. While her father is off working, and her mother is outdoors painting landscapes, she is inside their temporary dwelling, on her own, drawing. She draws Brad. She talks to Brad. Alice s father, John, is on a reconnaissance trip with his colleagues, drill-testing at an oil field several hundred miles north of where they are living. He s due back on Friday. When they still haven t heard from him on Sunday, Ming starts to worry. She takes Alice out in their jeep and they drive through the strange landscape of tundra and power lines and hidden military installations to find John...