David is a modest man who works in a bank, lives in a rooming house, enjoys books and quiet walks by the lake. Three months after unexpectedly being fired from his job, he takes a temporary position at a mortuary. And there, sitting alone in the "slumber room" one late afternoon, he sees something that he cannot comprehend, something that no science can explain, something that will force him to question everything he believes in, including himself. After his metaphysical experience, all his relationships change—with his estranged wife, his girlfriend, his mother—and he grudgingly finds himself at the center of a bitter public controversy over the existence of the supernatural.

Alan Lightman is the author of Einstein's Dreams, The Good Benito and The Diagnosis, which was a 2000 National Book Award finalist. His essays, short fiction, and reviews have appeared in a wide variety of publications including The New Yorker, Granta, Harper's, Story, The Atlantic Monthly and The New York Review of Books. An active research scientist in astronomy and physics for two decades, he has also taught both subjects on the faculties of Harvard and MIT.