Fourteen-year-old cheese maker and expert haggler Miri must travel to the realm of certain death because she is accidentally responsible for sending her brother there, only she's irrationally certain that he's not dead. Her allies will be the town outcast who may have been there before, and a more reputable farm boy who given the chance would throw her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and haul her back to her mother. On the way, she faces monsters that are human, monsters that are monsters, good guys, bad guys, wardrobe issues, and the corridor to Hell.