Future journalist and middle schooler Nora Tucker is at Wolf Creek for summer vacation and decides to collect documents for a community time capsule. Then two inmates break out of the town's maximum security prison. Now doors are locked, helicopters search the woods nearby, and police patrol the school grounds. The fear brings out the worst in the townspeople. Nora, and newcomer Elidee Jones, whose brother is in the local prison, suddenly find themselves in the middle of the situation.