Nine-year-old Louis Drax is a problem child: bright, precocious, deceitful, and dangerously accident-prone. When he falls off a cliff during a picnic, the accident seems almost predestined.

Louis miraculously survives--but the family has been shattered. Louis' father has vanished, his mother is in shock, and Louis lies in a deep coma from which he may never emerge.

In a renowned coma clinic, a specialist tries to coax Louis back to consciousness. But the boy defies medical logic, startling the doctor out of his safe preconceptions, and drawing him inexorably into the dark heart of Louis' buried world. Only Louis holds the key to the mystery surrounding his fall--and he can't communicate. Or can he?