Years ago, the Warming came and it was destructive. Now, everyone in the meadow and city is assigned a job. The keepers enforce rules, the catchers track rule breakers, the computers are those who conduct all the mathematical computations. Jeremy Finn is a dreambender. He and the other dreambenders secretly analyze people’s dreams and adjust them to avoid danger and violence, fear and anger, music and art. It is those things that bring about emotions which are thought to bring about another Warming.

Callie Crawford lives in the city and works as a computer, but is dissatisfied with her work. One night, Jeremy encounters Callies’s dream of singing, and he finds it beautiful. Jeremy questions the rules of a dreambender, and he allows her singing dream to continue. Because of his choice, he is banned from his job as dreambender. He decides to escape the meadow and travel to the city to find Callie, telling her about the dreambenders which causes a domino effect of changes for those in the city and the meadow. Changes of hope.