Content Warning: This novel references children in foster care and harm to children. It also references kidnapping. It plays into stereotypes by at times referring to a child in foster care as “lost.”

A young, nameless boy (later revealed to be Art Hamilton) has no recollection of his identity or how he ended up sitting on a bench at a museum gallery. The Prologue refers to him only as “the boy,” and he does not recognize his own reflection in a sculpture’s glass display. He watches himself as if he is a stranger and feels powerless to comfort and help “the boy” who looks lost. He glances down at his own clothes and remarks that he is wearing the same blue jacket as the boy.

Part 1 opens with an epigraph from Vincent van Gogh’s letter to his brother, Theo, where he states they must “make an effort like the lost, like the desperate” (4).

Chapter 1 begins with a flashback to the village of Locronan, France, a few years before the novel’s main setting in Washington, DC. Victor Baudin has set up a special laboratory in a 300-year-old stone barn. Fluorescent lights, heat and cooling ducts, and a large metal table fill the space.