Nightmares of war and death from lost centuries torment a young boy with ever more devastating detail until he can't separate fantasy from reality. Denis meets a child he calls M, who seems to know his dreams intimately. She asks him, "Do you ... remember?" He grows into adulthood amid disturbing evidence that his fantasies have been ancient memories. He finds a decrepit cabin in the woods where they start coming real. Outside is a grave for one of his "imaginary" childhood playmates, Enoch. Someone has been tending a garden over it. Through life after life Denis and M have loved each other...

As a small boy, frail in body and spirit, Ed taps into lives that had been lived and lost long ago. They dig through him like lingering nostalgia for days he can't quite recall. Pathologically sensitive, he feels what friends and family hide even from themselves. Depressed, overwhelmed, he's afraid to reach out into life. Ed leaves for college as the Vietnam War deadens souls and riots tear cities apart. When he is drafted he refuses induction, knowing that if he ever finds himself in a paddy facing an armed enemy soldier, he wouldn't be the one pulling the trigger. Hitching a ride west with...