A woman alone in a town without pity on the most dangerous night of the year. Hell Night in the nasty, hard luck town of Harden, Minnesota, has always been more about setting fires and raising hell than costumes and trick or treat. This year the local hot rod gang has something special in mind. They plan to burn down the home of Vice Principal Elizabeth Baldwin...with her in it. The stern disciplinarian is a tempting target. A humourless outsider, hired to get a grip on the town's unruly youth, she has become a terror to bullies and truants and earned herself a town full of enemies. Isolated, and reviled, victim of a viscous whispering campaign about a secret, sordid past, Elizabeth faces the quickening darkness determined to make it through the most dangerous night of the year.