Opening
A plane jolts into crisis as Dawn Edelstein, a death doula, wakes to a calendar full of her clients’ names—people she has guided to the edge of life. When the captain announces a “planned emergency,” Dawn realizes her own life is suddenly the one in transition. Instead of seeing her family, she pictures a man from her past, and the choice that image ignites becomes the novel’s engine.
What Happens
On a routine flight, Dawn wakes to a reminder of the dead she’s accompanied—a quiet roll call that underscores her work and her reverence for endings. She likens her role to a flight attendant’s, shepherding people through a liminal space from one state to another. The metaphor becomes literal when the captain reports a “planned emergency,” an oxymoron that lodges in her mind as the cabin shifts into the choreography of impact: braced bodies, clipped instructions, the palpable hush of fear.
As the plane drops, Dawn’s life does not flash before her eyes. She does not see her husband, Brian Edelstein, or their daughter, Meret Edelstein. Instead, one image seizes her: Wyatt Armstrong, the archaeologist she loved in the Egyptian desert fifteen years ago. The moment crystallizes The Past's Influence on the Present. She thinks of her abandoned dissertation on the italicized Book of Two Ways—an ancient map of the afterlife—and wonders whether her heart would be judged as pure, a revealing flicker of Regret and Unfinished Business.
Dawn survives. One of only thirty-six, she winds up in a hospital, shock muffling everything. An airline representative arrives with a remarkable offer: they will fly her to any destination she needs to go. She has already told Brian not to come. Now she must choose between the life awaiting her in Boston and the one she left in Egypt. The prologue ends as she opens her mouth to answer—poised between two routes.
Key Events
- Dawn, a death doula, faces a midair “planned emergency.”
- In crisis, she thinks of Wyatt—not Brian or Meret.
- She survives a deadly crash; only thirty-six passengers live.
- The airline offers to send her “any destination she needs to go.”
- She stands at a crossroads between her present and her past.
Character Development
Dawn’s composure around death masks a dormant fault line. The emergency strips away routine and reveals what has always pulled at her: unfinished love, unfinished work, and an unchosen path.
- The death doula’s mindset—practical, compassionate, ritual-aware—frames how she processes catastrophe.
- Her first thought of Wyatt signals unresolved desire and intellectual allegiance to the life she nearly pursued.
- The offer of free passage turns internal conflict into an external, immediate decision.
- Her refusal to summon Brian highlights autonomy and ambivalence about the stability she’s built.
Themes & Symbols
The novel grounds itself in Choices and Alternate Paths. The airline’s offer literalizes the fork in the road: not simply where Dawn goes next, but which version of herself she claims. “Need” eclipses “want,” recasting travel as fate and logistics as existential choice.
Death, Dying, and the Afterlife shape the lens. Dawn’s profession and scholarship make the crash feel like a ritual passage: weighing a heart, charting routes, confronting judgment. The italicized Book of Two Ways becomes a personal map—two routes through the afterlife mirrored by two routes through her living world.
Symbols sharpen this duality:
- The Plane Crash: a violent pivot that breaks momentum and forces a new trajectory.
- “Planned Emergency”: the paradox of a life meticulously arranged until an uncontrollable rupture reveals hidden truth.
- The Book of Two Ways: a diagram of choice, consequence, and return.
Key Quotes
“planned emergency”
The phrase captures the prologue’s paradox: order inside chaos, control inside surrender. It mirrors Dawn’s carefully built life—planned, stable—colliding with a crisis that exposes the unplanned desires steering her.
“any destination she needs to go”
“Need” reframes geography as identity. The airline’s promise becomes a moral and emotional test, pushing Dawn to admit which life is essential and which is habit.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
The prologue launches the novel’s central conflict with immediacy: Dawn’s first instinct is not family but the life she almost chose. It threads Egyptology with the scientific worldview of Brian’s physics—mythic maps beside multiverse thought—promising a story where love, scholarship, and fate intersect. By ending on the brink of her answer, the book commits to exploring how a single decision can redraw an entire life.