We are born without choosing to be. Should we have to die in the same manner? Isn't it a human glory to refuse to accept a certain fate?'Jeffrey Lockhart's father, Ross, is a billionaire in his sixties, who happens to be the primary investor in a remote and secret compound where death is exquisitely controlled. There, bodies are carefully preserved until a future time when biomedical advances and new technologies can return them to a life of transcendent promise. When Jeff is invited to join Ross at the compound, he finds that among those about to surrender their bodies is Artis, Ross' younger wife, whose health is failing. Slowly, as Jeff prepares himself to bid 'an uncertain farewell' to his stepmother, he finds himself confronted with humanity's most unanswerable questions - about the legacies we leave, the nobility of death, and the ultimate worth of 'the mingled astonishments of our time, here, on earth.'Don DeLillo's seductive, spectacularly observed and brilliant new novel weighs the darkness of the world - terrorism, floods, fires, famine, plague - against the beauty and humanity of everyday life.