Award-winning novelist C.J. Lavigne returns with a strange and startling new vision of the future… The last vestiges of humanity live at the Colony, trapped between the myriad dangers of the protean sea and the poisonous moss-lands, which have blanketed the earth in the wake of an ecological calamity. The noxious moss affects the mind and the body; while it drives its users mad, it is also the only way people can have children.

When a baby arrives on the shore, the young caretakers of the Colony name her Naia, convinced that she is the daughter of the sea and a mysterious Drowned Man who heralded her passage months earlier. Naia grows up at the Colony, and learns the myriad dangers of a world turned feral, not the least of which being the moss-parents, who have surrendered their sanity in order to keep the human species alive.

Now, fully grown, Naia appears to hold the sea’s power through her remarkable heritage. When the Colony starts to look to her for leadership, she knows she is unable to provide what they need…