ZERO ZONE

COMING OCTOBER 6, 2020 FROM COUNTERPOINT PRESS

Los Angeles, the late 1970s: Jess Shepard is an installation artist who creates environments that focus on light and space, often leading to intense sensory experiences for visitors to her work. A run of critically lauded projects peaks with Zero Zone, an installation created at a former nuclear bomb testing site in the New Mexico desert. But when a small group of fanatics barricade themselves inside the installation, the authorities are forced to intervene, setting off a violent showdown and media sensation that will haunt Jess for years. 

Devastated by the distortion of her art, Jess retreats from the world: Was she somehow responsible for the chaos at Zero Zone? But the past isn’t done with her yet. One of the Zero Zone survivors, a troubled teenager, is missing, and the girls’ parents ask Jess to help find her. But the group’s charismatic leader is also looking for the girl, who he believes is the key to recreating their experience. Now Jess has no choice but to face down her fear, and try to recover her art—and possibly her life—from a violent cult intent on making it their own.