Set between the years 1987 and 2004, the book details the efforts of physicists George and Roger as they work to bring the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) online in Waxahachie, Texas.

She and George fall in love just as preliminary trial runs of the SSC produce an unexplained phenomenon: a Snark, to borrow an expression from Lewis Carroll, or an impossible event, in the form of a heavy particle which emerged from the planned head-on collision between two 20 TeV protons inside the SSC.

In addition to violating physical laws such as the conservation of mass, this particle emits pulses of radioactivity, spelling out the numerical prime number sequence of 2-3-5-7-11-13-17-19-23-29-31-37.

In this alternate history, American forces invaded Baghdad and overthrew Saddam Hussein after liberating Kuwait during the Gulf War (1990-1991), leading to George H. W. Bush's re-election in 1992 over Bill Clinton.

"[2] Kirkus Reviews noted "Cramer splendidly demonstrates just how fascinating and mind-boggling real science can be, and shows exactly how vulnerable basic research is to political whim.