Rachel’s boyfriend Frank is not like other people. He sees patterns where others discern only noise, picks up clues in forum posts and obscure sf stories, becomes convinced that earth is at war (or soon will be) with aliens. When he goes missing and the police refuse to investigate, Rachel hires a private investigator named Robin, who soon becomes alert to connections between her own difficult past and Frank’s possible present. Among the many threads the novel plays with are how to know the truth in a world that resists description, how to know if any truth you can perceive is ever actually whole. How to love across a reality as fractured, divergent, and broken as this one.