Publisher's Synopsis
It's 1976. Despite fierce international controversy over whether in vitro fertilization (IVF) should ever be performed in humans, doctors around the world race to be first to produce a baby through this procedure. Dr. Colin Sanford, a brilliant, ambitious obstetrician in the Pacific Northwest city of Emerald, has a plan. He recruits Dr. Giselle Hearn, an experienced laboratory geneticist-embryologist at the university who's frustrated by the ultraconservative policies of her department chairman. Drs. Sanford and Hearn, working secretly, set out to put their names in history books. Unfortunately, a secret that big is hard to keep, and Alma Wanego, Dr. Hearn's lab supervisor, catches on and demands a blackmail payment. Several months later, Dr. Sanford's patient, Joyce Kennett, gives birth to a healthy boy, and Sanford prepares to make an announcement at a press conference. But before that happens, Joyce Kennett's marginally-schizophrenic husband kills Dr. Hearn and ...