In the final seconds before the Pointe Reason nuclear reactor explodes around them in October 1971, Dr. Cecilia Ribold makes a conscious choice: to defy death itself. She, her true love Mitch, and her best friend and fellow physicist Dawn vow to find each other across lifetimes. Now, half a century later, they are each fully entrenched in their subsequent lives. Ceclia, now known as Vienna, finds Mitch, now Marcello, in a fateful encounter. Hoping to express her agonizing love for him, while also sending a warning to a culprit she partly blames for the Pointe Reason disaster, she publishes a novel containing details no one could possibly know about the meltdown --- unless they'd been there. The novel attracts her old friend Dawn, now Darcey, but also the dangerous attention of the perpetrators of the original disaster and the government who sees directed reincarnation as a valuable weapon.

Mary Olivia Pentecost, known as Mop, was born into one of the wealthiest families in the country --- and one of the most guarded. Now, two years after her mother’s mysterious death, Mop is seeking closure on the disquieting tragedy by returning to the New England seaside estate of her cloistered Aunty Liv --- once her closest relative and confidante. But behind the walls of the isolated estate, the shadows of the past are darker than Mop imagined. The puzzles of the family history are not to be shared, but unearthed. With each revelation comes a new, foreboding threat --- and for Mop, the grave suspicion that to discover Aunty Liv’s secrets is to become a prisoner of them.

What if you could choose your heaven now? Thirty-five-year-old Vivienne Marshall does just that, as she lies dying in the ICU. In her final week of life, Vivienne treks through the Heavens of a priest, a best friend, a homeless child, and a lover who never was. Her guardian angel, Noah, who may just be her soul mate, escorts her through selections of Heavens and through the confusion she experiences as she flounders between a doubt of life and the certainty of death. Although her visits to varied afterlives provide peace and beauty, choosing proves not so easy: Vivienne's love for her young son and her earthly father pull her from her colorful journey --- and from her divine love of Noah.