Christian Baker, a young New York journalist from The Chronicle, gets assigned to a social story about the disappearance of Monique Watson, a 12 years old African-American girl from Brooklyn. Trying to get the assignment behind, he quickly and poorly researches the story and goes with the first lead. This brings down a series of pains. Christian with guilt decides to finally do his work properly finding himself in a race against time to help the family find the girl
Alongside Night is the story of the final economic collapse of the United States as seen through the eyes of 16-year-old Elliot Vreeland, searching for his missing Nobel-laureate-economist father, and the mysterious teenage "Lorimer" whom Elliot meets in a black-market underground, whose own father might be the reason Elliot's father is missing.