Content Warning: This section discusses murder and death, graphic violence, suicide, trauma and PTSD, a cult, and racism.

The novel opens by briefly recounting the story of Amazement Park, a large and maze-like amusement park that opened in 1953. It was crowded and popular, and every seven years, it offered the public a week of free admission. However, in 1974, a five-year-old girl went missing, and the bad publicity caused the park to close. Today, it is wild and overgrown, though a topiary at the center still holds the little girl’s patent leather shoe, which was never found in the search.

The novel shifts to the narrative present, focusing on Mackenzie “Mack” Black, who lives in a shelter for unhoused people and tries her best to get through each day without being noticed. She is attending a mandatory meeting with one of the staff members, who wants her to enter a hide-and-seek competition sponsored by an extreme sports company that is offering the winning contestant a $50,000 prize. Mack has no intentions of entering; she is deeply traumatized because she is the sole survivor of her father’s murderous rampage, during which he massacred every member of the family but her.