It tells the story of a young girl, Charlie McGee, with the ability of pyrokinesis, whose destructive force a ruthless government agency tries to harness for their own purposes.

During his college years, Andy had participated in a Shop experiment dealing with "Lot 6", a drug with hallucinogenic effects similar to LSD.

The drug gave his future wife, Victoria “Vicky” Tomlinson, minor telekinetic abilities and him a telepathic form of mind control he refers to as "the push".

Andy's and Vicky's powers were physiologically limited; in his case, overuse of the push gives him crippling migraine headaches and minute brain hemorrhages, but their daughter Charlie develops a frighteningly strong pyrokinetic ability.

After years of Shop surveillance, a botched operation to take Charlie leaves her mother dead; Andy, receiving a psychic flash while having lunch with colleagues, rushes home to discover his wife murdered and his daughter kidnapped.

With nowhere else to turn, the pair flees to the fictional town of Tashmore, Vermont and takes refuge in a cabin that had once belonged to Andy's grandfather.

With his spirit broken, Andy becomes an overweight drug addict, seemingly loses his power, and is eventually deemed useless by the Shop.

After he dies, Charlie, grief-stricken and furious, sets the barn on fire; she then uses her pyrokinesis to kill the employees and blow up their getaway vehicles.

She decides on Rolling Stone magazine as an unbiased, honest media source with no ties to the government, and the book ends as she arrives to tell them her story.