An oppressive and murderous religious order dominates the lives and futures of the citizens of the world. A young woman, Samara, is rescued from abandonment at birth and raised on a secluded island by a respectable and feared older woman who does not follow the island's practice of killing all outsiders who find and enter the island. The island is dominated by a practice of gift seering, which reveals a child's gifting, future, and potential status in society at birth. Once this gifting is...