Origin: A Novel

Lena Dawson is a fingerprint examiner at a crime lab in the small city of Syracuse, New York, comfortable in her minute, predictable world of forensics. During one snowy, frigid upstate winter, Lena's routine is broken by a series of crib deaths, indistinguishable from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome but for the fevered testimony of one distraught mother with connections in high places. Soon the deaths draw the attention of the police and the national media and raise the possibility of the inconceivable: that an infant murderer is at work.
Orphaned as a child, out of place as an adult, gifted with delicate powers of intuition, Lena finds herself playing a critical role in the case, even as her secure world begins to unravel. Her colleagues scheme and bicker; her controlling, overprotective ex-husband tries to outmaneuver a suspected rival; community activists promote fears of a new kind of terrorism. And then there is the mystery of her own childhood to solve, her late-night dreams of walking through the rain forest - unexplainable dreams. Could the improbable deaths of a half-dozen babies be somehow connected to her own improbable survival?