Description
Sophia Black is soulless. At least, that’s how people interpret the discovery that one in three people lacks consciousness. From the outside, these “Somatics” are indistinguishable from anyone else. But on the inside, as revealed by a strange new technology called an Ontiscope, there is simply no one home.
Living in a sanctuary with other Somatics, Sophia appears content to live a life of solitude, fully estranged from her ex-husband and two children. But after a senseless act of violence hits close to home, she resolves to cross the country in search of her former family, hoping to prove to herself and others that the love she holds is no illusion. Her search leads her to the White Mountains of New Hampshire, where her son Sam leads a mysterious commune called the First Family.
To Sam’s step-brother Thomas, the group sounds like a lot of the spiritual hoopla gripping the country. But when Sam reveals a unique power to alter consciousness, forces from his past emerge, conspiring to control it for their own ends. Among them is the inventor of the Ontiscope, a megalomaniac tech CEO on a holy quest to “cure” Somaticism.
As the men, women, and children of the First Family are beset by forces that would have them scattered, divided, or worse, the lines between individuals begin to blur, posing difficult questions in a world lost to compassion, where paranoia reigns and nobody can be sure what it means to be human—or what it means to love someone.