Seventeen-year-old Jenny Cable, following her transfer to the care of her estranged father, discovers that there is a secret organization of people with incredible powers of the mind, divided by a rift in ideology into two distinct circles. The Persuaders use their powers to manipulate the unsuspecting, and the Sentries are ruthless in their endeavors to protect mankind by any means necessary. Much to the chagrin of both sides, Jenny is the product of a Sentry mother and a Persuader father, a parentage only serving to further alienate her from her kind. To complicate things more, she learns that it is mandated by law that an Unavowed, one pledged to neither Sentry nor Persuader, must bind himself to one side or the other on the day he turns eighteen, and Jenny's birthday is quickly approaching. As she finds her allegiance torn between her best friend, Taylor - a Sentry boy who abandoned his family and his past - and her father (including his enigmatic apprentice, Vince) she must also avoid falling victim to the influential and deadly Samuel Locke in his pursuit of cultural purity.