Unlike Roberta's family, Preston Walford is fabulously wealthy, and so he has his memories and personality uploaded to the Internet when his body fails. This allows him not only to extend his life but to observe and "parent" the traumatized Meredith from every webcam, television and telephone in her vicinity.

Thus "translated," Preston befriends Roberta while she is still in the hospital, urging the two girls to form a friendship that neither has any interest in. Feeling hounded, Meredith retreats into religion, moving into a Gaian Temple within whose low-tech atmosphere she can escape her newly attentive father and the tabloid reporters who track her every move. Roberta, meanwhile, barely survives the foster-care system and becomes a teacher, eventually landing a job in an experimental school, KinderkAIr, where her primary educational partner is an AI named Fred.

The two meet as adults when Meredith enrolls her son in KinderkAIr, but despite Preston's long-cherished hopes (and his behind-the-scenes machinations), the outcome of this meeting is anything but rosy. In fact, circumstance has made the two women into unwitting adversaries, because the emotionally fragile Meredith has discovered a dreadful secret about her son. Knowing that it can only be a matter of time before Roberta and Fred figure it out, too—and are compelled to act—Meredith is left with no choice but to try to stop them before it is too late.

Musings on memory and sanity

Readers familiar with Susan Palwick's fiction (Fate of Mice) will be unsurprised to discover that Shelter is at once a deeply disturbing and a profoundly uplifting novel. Palwick's depiction of a future United States struggling to cope with global climate change, an AI civil rights movement, Caravan Virus and the promise of immortality—in the form of Preston-style translation—for its wealthiest citizens, is nuanced and convincingly messy. The poster girl for this muddle is Meredith herself: A CV survivor, unwilling celebrity and child of the first translated personality, she suffers from a cornucopia of phobias and other mental disorders gained during her time in isolation. Like her country, Meredith is determined to survive on her own terms, and like the United States, she cannot help but stumble without support. It is an elegant, well-constructed metaphor.

Palwick dissects humanity's ugly side in a fashion more commonly seen in mystery fiction, in the works of authors like Minette Walters and P.D. James, for example—writers who lay bare the souls of their characters for the reader to judge. She does so with considerable compassion and evenhandedness. Though much of what is in Shelter is dark, the narrative never completely shuts out the hope of redemption, and the novel's ending is surprising, sincere and emotionally powerful.

Like Meredith, Shelter is not always easy or even likable. Meredith's voice is abrasive, and the story's transitions and plot twists jostle together in an abrupt, sometimes awkward fashion. This is, however, one of those novels that seems at once complete and far too short, offering tantalizing glimpses into subplots that its author has no space to fully explore, creating minor characters and implied storylines that sparkle with promise while lying too far from the heart of Meredith and Roberta's tale to justify expansion. Like a journey to a new and exciting country, the world Palwick has created is textured, vivid and dense, with more to see than any single trip would ever allow. This story is complete, however—no mere setup for a sequel—and it may well be that the writer has no intention of ever revisiting this fractured and complicated future. If that is the case, readers may have to settle for putting Shelter on their list of books to reread—not once, but again and again.