While on a long journey north, a post-apocalyptic survivor is awakened to the sound of an explosion, and upon investigation, finds the hope that she might not be alone in this deadened world.

A crime she committed in her youthful past sends Piper Chapman to a women's prison, where she trades her comfortable New York life for one of unexpected camaraderie and conflict in an eccentric group of fellow inmates.

A murder in 1944 draws together the great poets of the beat generation: Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs.