With his astonishing future vision, Howard V. Hendrix has emerged as one of the new masters of science fiction, drawing extraordinary praise from his debut novel Lightpaths  and the follow-up, Standing Wave . Now he meshes virtual reality, deep-space exploration, and human nature in a novel starkly breathtaking in its portrayal of the quest for meaning, against a backdrop of scientific and spiritual chaos. During the first, turbulent decades of the twenty-first century, an artifact that resembles an angel's shoulder blade is unearthed from California's La Brea tar pit, a startling discovery that will forever alter the lives of five people--and send them reeling toward one blinding moment of transcendental light.