What happens if you get the one thing you want most in the world, and discover that it will destroy everything you love and believe in?
This is the situation in which John Solenet, a Repatriation Counselor in a future earth, finds himself in my new book, The Visitors' Gifts.
The alien visitors who share Earth with us Take people for unspecified purposes before Returning them to their lives. The people Returned have no memory of what they've been doing while they were with the Visitors. The families of the Taken ones need counseling and help as they cope, first with their losses, and then with the transitions when the missing people are Returned.
John has been a counselor all his life, helping people deal with the touch of the Visitors on their lives. He has intimate knowledge of their sufferings: his own wife, Lila, has been Taken, and has been with the Visitors for two years as the book opens.
When the implant in John's wrist informs him that his wife is about to be Returned to him, he is happy beyond belief. Even the angry response of his teenage daughter, Joella, who has been fighting with him continuously since Lila was Taken, fails to dent John's eager anticipation. Even his difficulties with the exercises that accompany a Return don't faze him.
But Lila's Return proves to be different from any that John has ever experienced. The Lila who comes back is not the same Lila who was Taken, and John discovers that she has been given a mission by the Visitors, a mission that could destroy the delicate balance that the Visitors and the humans have worked out over the years.