Caroline Bohentin, Joe McLaren, and Robbie Brekke meet at a fashionable private hospital where each has signed up for a new—expensive and exclusive—procedure: Previous Life Access Surgery. This procedure removes barriers in the human brain and allows patients to recall memories from all of their previous incarnations throughout human history. But the memories are not under conscious and willful control. After the operation, each patient must begin his or her journey into the past with moments of discovery and surprise, whose meaning and significance are often unclear. Meanwhile, in the outside world, which is ravaged by plagues that destroy the body's immune defenses, a crisis is building, both medically and politically. The mutated plague virus is destroying people's memories at an ever-increasing rate. And only those who have had the surgery seem to be immune. As Caroline, Joe, and Robbie begin to remember flashes of previous lives, it becomes more and more evident that they are somehow connected to each other and that their connection has fateful implications for the entire future of the human race.
Author
Nancy Kress is an American science fiction writer. She began writing in 1976 but has achieved her greatest notice since the publication of her Hugo and Nebula-winning 1991 novella Beggars in Spain which was later expanded into a novel with the same title. In addition to her novels, Kress has written numerous short stories and is a regular columnist for Writer's Digest. She is a regular at Clarion writing workshops and at The Writers Center in Bethesda, Maryland. During the Winter of 2008/09, Nancy Kress is the Picador Guest Professor for Literature at the University of Leipzig's Institute for American Studies in Leipzig, Germany. Excerpted from Wikipedia.
