It's centered around Neil Miller and his struggle to come to terms with the loss of his parents in a car crash and the subsequent Calcutta Plague that decimates the adult population.

Sent to live with his grandparents in a small village named Winchelsea, England, Neil suffers from post traumatic stress.

Soon, a devastating illness, called the Calcutta Plague, makes headlines, killing thousands of people in India in a matter of months.

Now the sole survivor in Winchelsea and deciding that the village is becoming dangerous -- packs of feral dogs roaming everywhere -- he leaves for London, taking first a manual Mini which he has difficulty driving, followed by an automatic Jaguar.

In the last paragraph of the book Neil abruptly changes his mind, feeling that he would never get over the guilt of leaving Billie to die, and with Lucy goes downstairs to open the door and let her back inside.

Empty World gives the youthful reader far more to think about by exploring darker and more realistic themes of greed, mistrust, despair, and insanities.