Don DeLillo's new novel touches on topics that have always interested the author: the temptations that new technologies prepare, the power of money, the fear of chaos. Ross Lockhart has invested a large sum of money in a secret enterprise that is developing a way to preserve bodies until future times, when new technologies will allow them to be brought back to life. Both he and his seriously ill wife are going to try this method on themselves. Lockhart's son Jeffrey chooses life, chooses to rejoice and suffer, to experience everything that is in store for him along the way.