Synesthesia: a neurological phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads, automatically, to a second sensory or cognitive pathway. Some theorize that synesthesia is the next step in human evolution.

Rhys Overland experiences the world differently than most people. She identifies numbers by color, experiences a strong odor when hearing certain words, and has an adverse effect on anything electronic when angry. Left at the door of a Virginia orphanage at age three and raised in no less than 24 foster homes, she’s spent the last two decades working off-the-radar jobs while making a slow journey to the muddy river that cuts the country’s belly in two. It is the place where she was cut out of her mother. A place in which she feels both at home, and never more vulnerable.

When someone from her mother’s past, someone who was present at her birth, arrives at the door, Rhys knows she won’t be home for long. She knows what she has to do: run.