Adam Taylor lives what seems to him an ordinary life in an ordinary world, where the sun just happens to rise in the west and set in the east, and people begin their lives when they're taken from their graves and end them when they're united with their mothers. But unlike everyone else, Adam has trouble accepting this process. He doesn't seem to have a mother and hence cannot return to her body in the accepted way.Tim Eldred's illustrations bring to life this masterful tale of a future world which chronicles Adam's search for his mother. The journey takes him to Alta, a seer who describes to her incredulous listeners an earlier world where people grew older rather than younger; to Egypt, where he's greeted as a god; and to increasingly distant places that the author reveals with haunting power.