Claudette Sanders is taking flying lessons from Chuck Thompson. It is a beautiful fall day on October 21, and Claudette looks down with pleasure upon her fellow residents in Chester’s Mill, Maine—often simply known as The Mill. A woodchuck ambles through the nearby woods, headed for the town. Suddenly, an invisible force descends upon the town: It cuts the woodchuck neatly in half, while the airplane containing Claudette and Chuck crashes into the barrier, killing them both.

Former army captain and Iraq War veteran Dale Barbara has been living in Chester’s Mill for just a few months. He has been working as a short-order cook for Rose Twitchell at her café, Sweetbriar Rose, but after an incident at the local bar, Dipper’s, Barbara—or Barbie, as he is known to friends and foes alike—thinks he should leave the small town. Barbie craves the peace and quiet associated with small towns, but getting on the wrong side of Junior, the son of the town’s Second Selectman, Big Jim Rennie, has ruined it. However, as he tries to leave town, he witnesses the strange accidents that accompany the lowering of some invisible force field around the town: he sees the woodchuck cut in two; he witnesses the airplane crashing, full throttle, into something that nobody can detect; he gapes at the body parts and twisted metal littering the field and wonders at the fire caused by the wreckage somehow staying on the far side of the field.