Joining a psychologist's utopian experiment involving children collectively raised apart from their biological families, a pregnant teen struggles with the group's growing hostilities and funding challenges while fighting her feelings for the doctor.

Child psychologist Alex Delaware returns in a story that begins with a childlike chant and finishes with Alex at the end of a chain of unexpected deaths.

"In 1920, when she graduated from Vassar College with her degree in psychology, Rosalie Rayner took a coveted position at the Johns Hopkins research lab to assist the charismatic John B. Watson, the man who pioneered behaviorist psychology. Together, John Watson and Rosalie Rayner conducted experiments on hundreds of babies to prove behaviorist principles of nurture over nature. They also embarked on a scandalous affair that cost them both their jobs....