GIRL ZERO

Every day, when she sleeps or catches her father spying on her, Seira Kotera is reminded of her very first memory: her father in a cave drowning girls that look just like her. She remembers a voice she knows to be her own, showing her the moment where the real Seira had tragically died as a young child, how their father had traveled to the wilds of Japan in search of creatures of Japanese folklore, in order to bring his daughter back with the help of the Eden Initiative--a government-sponsored program charged with developing pharmaceuticals for climate-induced medical crises.

At first, the Kotera family is whole again. Seira grows up into a teenager under the watchful eyes of her parents and the Eden Initiative in an arid San Francisco where record temperatures require skyscraper canopies to shade city centers and pedestrians must wear UV-blocking coveralls outside. But when the Eden Initiative develops and globally administers a cure-all serum based on Seira's DNA, the inoculated begin exhibiting inexplicable and unforeseen side-effects--a brief loss of physical features followed by total memory loss. As the world begins to unravel into chaos and fear over what to do with those who have returned without
their memories, Seira discovers that she alone can communicate with the lost consciousness of the afflicted. And, as side-effects of the serum evolve, she must uncover the mystery of the outbreak before it's too late, all the while reconciling a need to belong with an origin that evades identity.

In the spirit of Charlie Jane Anders' All the Birds in the Sky and Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, Girl Zero questions the very nature of identity and memory, asking: Is who we are merely what we remember? Or is who we are what others remember of us? And to what lengths are we willing to go in order to remember and keep our loved ones close? For readers of Victor LaValle, Haruki Murakami, Peng Shepherd, Naomi Alderman, and Bethany C. Morrow, comes a story of undeniable love and loyalty that transcends genre, exploring identity formation, family, and how humanity might embrace a second chance.