Teenage Mary Cummings, who has “been Born Again her whole life,” is about to enter her senior year at American Eagle Christian High School near Baltimore with her Fundamentalist Christian friends Hilary Faye and Veronica, the three of whom have formed a girl group called the Christian Jewels. Everything seems perfect—until Mary’s “perfect Christian boyfriend” Dean tells her, as they’re swimming underwater, that he thinks he’s gay.

After a 40-year armistice in a war between the Twelve Colonies and the Cylons, the Cylons launch a surprise nuclear attack intended to exterminate the human race. Virtually all of the population of the Twelve Colonies are wiped out.