Sitting on a stool in a single spotlight, Atan bends over his guitar and peers into the dark. "They say I was born tired, with a heavy stride, and the memories of an old man's life blazing in my eyes," he sings.

Named after an Inuit shaman who dies on the night of his birth, the white boy Atan finds himself yoked to a primal wisdom he does not understand and burdened with a struggle against the powers of his day he never asked for. Emerging as a singer-songwriter of the new millennium and a reluctant hero of the counter-culture, Atan draws the ire of wealthy men who would like to see him take his place among history's fallen agitators for love. After eluding an assassin's bullet, he is elevated to the stature of a saint, and when he is targeted by the FBI and flees abroad, his allure only grows. Now, in 2042, Atan has come to Washington, DC-smuggled into a city under martial law in a nation on the verge of collapse-where he hides in a safe house, waiting for the revolution.