 They are a proud, noble community who get by on giving new life to things and people thrown away by the Topsiders (the surface people).Downsiders are not allowed to travel to the surface, and every contact with Topsiders is strictly forbidden, since it is said that it would lead to the fall of the Downside.Talon, a fourteen-year-old Downsider, is curious about the Topside; he travels to the Topside and meets a fourteen-year-old girl named Lindsay Matthias, who just moved from Texas to live in NY with her father after her mother went to Africa with her professor for three years to study the white rhino.