Note that this novel is divided into two volumes. In the second half of FRAMESHIFTS, Professor Hank Randall discovers that one of his former students, Avery Crawley, in a bizarre interpretation of his classroom lessons, has founded a cult using genetic engineering. After horrific encounters with disease and a tornado, Randall begins to change his mind about Crawley's utopia. The stories of FRAMESHIFTS portray an imaginary region of Northern Virginia from the present time to the next century. A novel made of eight stories of different genres, the characters include small-time politicians, murder investigators, teachers, students, bullies and their victims, religious extremists, grieving lovers, special weapons officers, and technocratic visionaries who work against time to prepare for the environmental and social consequences of nonsustainable consumption and climate change. FRAMESHIFTS is a threnody for special people and places, a meditation upon loss and transience. Because there is no singular path through the work of grief, many kinds of loss are considered. Although the genres shift from mystery to suspense, to science fiction and poems, the characters continue through the eight stories--each of their paths a unique response to loss.