When the remote settlement of East Ridge in the South Island of New Zealand is isolated during a snowstorm, Renee and Tyler take in three travellers. Without electricity or mobile phone contact and with all the roads around closed, the five are completely cut off from the world. There, they begin to bond and help one another with problems in their lives.

Renee is now living with her partner Tyler at East Ridge after a violent marriage to a Larry Brooks and the loss of an unborn child. Tyler, who has a tractor to patrol the local section of highway, rescues Aza and Sofia after their car slides off the road in a heavy snowstorm.  As well, Ian, a lawyer who was actually coming to visit Renee is also found in a separate accident where his motorbike skidded off the road.

Aza is a lecturer and researcher at Auckland University who has had her work on genetic profiling, plagiarised from her PhD thesis by Professor Joseph Hardy who becomes an enemy when she can prove...