Jerry Halpern is a 48-year-old literary agent from Radnor, Pennsylvania, trying to preserve a stable, comfortable life for his wife and two teenage daughters. As the family prepares for their annual summer vacation in Avalon, New Jersey, Jerry finds himself trapped in a grueling routine, exhausting himself by commuting daily between the shore and his Philadelphia office to maintain a lifestyle that stretches his financial boundaries.
Professionally, Jerry is facing an existential crisis. The literary and film industries are collapsing under the weight of generative AI, which is saturating the market with heartless, automated ghostwriters. To Jerry's horror, a listless public doesn't care that the books and films they consume are written by lines of code rather than human souls.
The compounding stress of his dying career triggers an aggressive, months-long bout of insomnia. Desperate to function, Jerry secretly doubles his prescription of Xanax, leading to severe daytime drowsiness and terrifying moments where he nearly blacks out behind the wheel.
When a clinical sleep study reveals that his brain is entirely incapable of reaching deep sleep, a hidden family past is unearthed. Jerry’s mother finally breaks a thirty-year silence to reveal a terrifying genetic birthright: both his aunt and grandmother died of Fatal Familial Insomnia (FFI), a rare, incurable disease that destroys the thalamus. The "adult mystery" of Jerry's childhood has returned as a definitive death sentence, closing in on a man who just wants a night’s sleep.
