PRISM

When the sophomore students at Buchanan High School find out where they are going for their annual school field trip Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico they are not happy. With so many options available, why travel to the middle of nowhere to see some boring caves? The only positive is that New Mexico is the center of UFO and alien lore. Maybe something exciting will happen.

Kaida Hutchenson, Zeke Anderson, and Joy Tallon are a group of students who ride with their math teacher Mr. Addison. After battling highway hypnosis, Mr. Addison loses control of the van, and it swerves across the road and bursts into flames. Kadia, Zeke and Joy manage to get out, but Mr. Addison dies on impact. The kids are now alone in the pitch-black desert of southern New Mexico. When a storm comes in, they seek shelter under nearby boulders. They huddle together but the storm drives them further into the bowels of the rocks, until Joy falls through the ground into a pit. Zeke and Kaida try to try to rescue her but they fall in too, and they realize they are in a cave too deep to climb out of. When a beam of light seems to lead them out, they walk through and wake up at home in their own beds with only vague recollections of the horrific previous night.

When each teen checks the date, each one realizes that the Carlsbad Cavern trip is scheduled seven weeks in the future! Life seems the same but when they soon discover odd new developments. They are now living in a parallel universe where the creation of any medicines and the training of medical personnel to cure or treat the ill and injured are illegal as it is thought of as a disturbance to the balance of the world. Anyone caught trying to make medicine, or even promote the idea of medicine, is arrested and disposed of. Sick and dead people are picked up by crews called the Street Cleaners and are never heard of again.

Joy hurt her arm when the van flipped over and it is getting worse, so the three teens band together to try and find their way back to the Old World. They realize they must let events lead them to the tragic night of the accident and then they must find that cave all before the Street Cleaner Crew finds them. When they do return, they are wiser about the secrets of their parallel universe.

Faye Kellerman has written nineteen New York Times bestselling novels for adults, including more than a dozen bestselling mysteries starring the husband-and-wife team of Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus. This is her first book for children. Aliza Kellerman is Faye's talented fifteen-year-old daughter; this is Aliza's first book. Faye and Aliza live in Beverly Hills, California.