In the fall of 1966, a group of students, led by a charismatic wanderer named Spencer Mallon, meet in a deserted field outside of Madison, Wisconsin. Their purpose: to conduct an “experiment” that will, if successful, alter the nature of reality itself. The outcome of that experiment is astonishing and inexplicable, and will affect the destinies of everyone involved in fundamental ways.

The story traces the reverberations of a single catastrophic event, taking us into the lives of a diverse group of characters, among them a thief, a killer, a best-selling novelist, and a magnetic, luminously beautiful blind woman—the skylark of the title.