On an ordinary, beautiful autumn day, the town of Chester's Mills, Maine, was suddenly cut off from the rest of the world by an invisible force barrier. Planes crash into the dome and fall, blazing, from the sky; a gardener's hand is cut off by a force field; people who went to a neighboring city on business cannot return to their loved ones; cars explode when colliding with the dome. No one understands what this barrier is, where it came from, or whether it will go away. Dale Barbara, an Iraq conflict veteran and now a chef, finds himself teamed with several brave residents—Julia Shumway, the owner of the town's newspaper, a physician's assistant, a woman, and three brave children. Opposing them is Big Jim Rennie, a local politician who will stop at nothing, even murder, to maintain power, as well as his son with his personal “skeleton in the closet.” But their main opponent is the Dome itself. Because time is not just short. Time is running out!