When 14-year-old Sadie Grace Perkins falls asleep on a bench at the McKinley Street Zoo in her quiet hometown of Goshen, Arizona, she awakens to find her normal, middle-American life abruptly turned upside-down.

Sadie's screams begin the instant before her eyes shoot open. She begins screaming and doesn't stop. It isn't the sudden finality of a nightmare; it isn't only what she awakens from - it is what she awakens to - mere inches away, assaulting her senses through the fence at the zoo, is a splotchy face with two misshapen eyes, huge staring eyes - eyes that stare boldly into her own and then knife straight through them, directly into her brain! To someone who has experienced neither, there is nothing to distinguish losing one's mind from sharing it with another.

In a life-changing experience at the McKinley Street Zoo, Sadie learns of her Talent from a young giraffe named Knobby. She also discovers that her destiny and that of the giraffe are intertwined with the actions of a mysterious 'Gaea' and the fate of the planet itself.

Book I begins Sadie's Quest to save the planet and all its inhabitants from environmental collapse. She has Gaea, the world's animals, and a wealthy venture capitalist behind her. But she faces off against the strong opposition of the U.S. military and intelligence services and powerful corporate interests. Sadie is in for a bumpy ride.