Maximum Light

By the mid-twenty-first century, the global fertility rate has dropped nearly eighty percent, with no known cause. The average age in the United States is now fifty-four, and children are highly valued by those who have them and desperately desired by those who cannot. Maximum Light follows three people from different parts of this transformed American society. Nick Clementi is a seventy-five-year-old doctor serving as an advisor to the Congressional Advisory Committee for Medical Crises. Shana Walders is twenty-six and has just completed two years in the National Service Corps. Cameron Atuli is twenty-eight, a principal dancer with the National Ballet, who has voluntarily had a portion of his memory removed—though he no longer knows what was taken or why. During her final days of National Service, Shana witnesses an event so disturbing that it reaches Clementi's committee. The incident is so shocking that even the committee struggles to accept its reality. What Cameron cannot remember may hold the answer to the mystery.