Ouroboros

September 1964: The largest mass kidnapping in United States history occurs in a quaint town in the Colorado foothills. More than one hundred employees of the Jenkins Company are brutally herded into an underground complex by the "e;Luminaries of the New Breed."e; Here the abductees are forced to relearn their lives in a perverse mirror-world of monotony and degradation overseen by the vicious cult. Above ground, with few clues and no leads, the Jenkins' employees appear to have vanished. Amid this nightmare is the drama of Harry Stolarski, possibly the last victim of the kidnapping who can retain a precious memory of the outside world: his wife's name, Margaret. Nearly broken and mad and growing weaker, Harry shelters that spark in an attempt to survive. Margaret Stolarski turns to Lawson Jacobs, private investigator, to find her husband. Survival beneath the earth parallels the detective work above ground, as unsettling developments are unearthed. For a decade Lawson follows an elusive trail-until Harry's terrifying reappearance. Written during the pandemic and in its aftermath, Ouroboros by Henry Franklin is the first Generation Z novel to embody the emotional upheaval of isolation and existential angst that young people were forced to contend with. With craftsmanship, ingenuity, and narrative power, the novel is one of the finest explorations of awakening into a world that had never occurred until now, exposing the profound darkness that exists when the mind is left unsatiated.