Deb Solomon is a new mom suffering a spate of postpartum depression, a listless marriage and a career in free-fall. So she jumps at the chance to go to work in another world: a university laboratory housing language-competent apes and the humans who study and care for them, led by brilliant primatologist Dr. Soraya Baldwin-Ruhl. But Soraya's star is already falling, and the lab's human inhabitants act increasingly apelike, even as the apes start to seem more human. Deb's own life soon spirals into a science soap opera as she follows Soraya further and further into madness.