Both Shira and her husband Josh are owned by the Y-S corporation, so it is the corporation that decides to award sole custody of their son, Ari, to Josh when they split. Josh and Ari are soon shipped offworld to Pacifica, leaving Shira with no way to see her son. Heartbroken, she leaves the domed corporate enclave and travels to the free town of Tikva, in what used to be New England, where she grew up and where her grandmother still lives. But things are not easy in Tikva, either: they are under attack from unidentified forces who have slipped through their net’s defenses to murder several residents. In return, one of the residents has manufactured an illegal weapon he thinks can save them all: a cyborg. Among the competing dystopian and utopian communities, the book plays with what it means to make a life, and whether or how you can control it. Or if you ought to even try.