When Addison Goodheart is born the midwife takes one glance at the baby and attempts to smother him. His mother raises him in the woods and she is the only human he knows until age 8 when his mother forces him to leave and go into the woods on his own. He finds his way to a highway and hides in the back of a truck and eventually makes it to what probably is New York City. Every one he meets thinks he is hideous and they try to kill him.
He finds a man in the city who is like him, hideous, and he grows up living with this man in a secret place below the city only coming out at night. After 18 years pass the man he has lived with, and called his father, is murdered by two street people.
Addison wanders the nights for years and eventually meets 19 year old Gwyneth who seems to understand him but she has a phobia where she doesn’t want to be touched.
Gwyneth’s also lives alone in the city and is being hunted by Ryan Telford who is a sexual pervert and wants to kill her. She enlists Addison to help her.
Koontz’s allegory of good and evil suggests that evil is beyond redemption through all humankind. The conclusion is a surprise. The book was a surprise and different than what we have become accustomed to. with Dean Koontz.