To help her fall asleep, the author tells his daughter a bedtime story from his mischievous childhood when he bought magic beans with his mother's grocery money.

Milliken and Mae have never left The Trench--it's all they've ever known. They were born in The Trench, and they'll die there, just like all their people do. The two girls, eight and eleven, are a part of The Trenchfolk, a sprawling settlement of people living inside the massive ice walls of a vast, seemingly endless frozen trench carved into the surface of an otherwise icy wasteland. The Trenchfolk survive in this hostile world by following The Three...