Summary

Before the events of the novel, Judge Margot Nadir and her husband Remy are sitting in a Brooklyn auditorium with their infant child Hadrian, waiting to watch Margot’s daughter, Story, perform on stage. Margot is a prominent judge; Remy is a Black stay-at-home father attempting to get a writing career together. They are both Republicans. When Story takes the stage, she performs the national anthem, and the entire theater rises in unison.

In the wake of an immense heat wave, children begin killing themselves in large numbers and marking the sites of their deaths with the symbol A11. A national emergency is declared as parents begin to panic about the safety of their children.

Ty Oliver, the CEO of a prominent pharmaceutical company, maintains a fraught relationship with his daughter, Claire. When Ty, a CEO at a pharmaceutical company, is put...