A message is only a message if someone receives it.
When an emergency announcement empties a New York subway car, one girl stays seated. The warning has reached everyone except her. For Eli, the hearing aids behind her ears and the unicorn on her backpack turn a broken announcement into a question he cannot leave alone: what good is a message if the person who needs it never receives it?
A former EMT separated from his four children, Eli knows how it feels to remain present in a life that no longer hears him. At a cluttered kitchen table, he begins building a receiver that lets people choose how their meaning travels, without asking them to become someone else first.
But understanding is harder than producing a convincing voice. As collaborators challenge his assumptions and a powerful technology company closes in, Eli must defend more than an invention. He must learn whether he can listen when the answer threatens everything he wants to believe.
