When the Dome's calcification process accelerates, Chester's Mill has 24 hours before the barrier's breakdown will suffocate everyone inside. While the new deadline puts added pressure on Joe to bring the Dome down, Barbie and Julia race to save his child from The Kinship. Also, Big Jim tries to manage the increasingly volatile Hektor, who is adamant that infected townspeople never escape the Dome.
On an entirely normal, beautiful fall day in Chester's Mill, Maine, the town is inexplicably and suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible force field. Planes crash into it and fall from the sky in flaming wreckage, a gardener's hand is severed as 'the dome' comes down on it, people running errands in the neighboring town are divided from their families, and cars explode on impact. No one can fathom what this barrier is, where it came from, and when-or if-it will go away.
Dale Barbara, Iraq vet and now a short-order cook, finds himself teamed with a few intrepid citizens-town newspaper owner Julia Shumway, a physician's assistant at the hospital, a select-woman, and three brave kids. Against them stands Big Jim Rennie, a politician who will stop at nothing-even cuddle-to hold the reins of power, and his son, who is keeping a horrible secret in a dark pantry. But their main adversary is the Dome itself. Because time isn't just short. It's running out.