The book opens in October, with narrator and protagonist Julia. She reflects on “the slowing,” and explains, “We didn’t notice right away. We couldn’t feel it” (3). In this brief two-page chapter, the context for “the slowing” is painted in broad strokes. Julia details how people “were distracted back then by weather and war” and “had no interest in the turning of the earth” (3). Days lengthen only by minutes at first, and Julia recalls how the “days had grown by fifty-six minutes in the night” (4). With this unprecedented natural disaster, “the freeways clogged immediately. People heard the news, and they wanted to move” (4). People try to flee cities en masse, but given that the crisis is an Earth-wide phenomenon, there is nowhere else to go. 

Julia is a shy sixth grader who lives with her mother and father in a quiet suburban neighborhood in California. The news of “the slowing”—what it is and how little scientists know about it—breaks on a Saturday morning.

Julia’s best friend, Hanna, is at Julia’s house, and the girls are just waking up after a sleepover.