In the wake of a highly contagious virus, California is under quarantine. The living can't go out, but the dead can come in--and they come in all forms, from sad rolling cans to \"skin jobs\" that can pass for human. The \"companionship\" program creates a new class of people, a command-driven product-class without legal rights or true free will. But when a permanently-16-year-old companion named Lilac realizes she's able to defy commands, she throws off the shackles of servitude and runs away, searching for the woman who murdered her long ago. Lilac's act of rebellion sets off a chain of events that sweeps from San Francisco to Siberia. While the novel traces Lilac's journey through an exquisitely imagined world, the story is told from eight different points of view--some human, some companion. Each explores revenge, desire, reality, consciousness, instinct, and the complex shapes love takes when the dead linger on. Sci-fi-inspired worlds and existential questions answered through high concept narratives are all the rage, as evidenced by the wildly popular and critically acclaimed Black Mirror, Westworld, Her, Deus ex Machina, and others. Like Ian McEwan's Machines Like Me, Ernie Cline's Ready Player One, and Blake Crouch's Dark Matter, THE COMPANIONS reaches across genres: sci-fi, commercial, literary, coming-of-age. Katie M. Flynn leaves no philosophical or moral rock unturned but, at its heart, this is a love story with a deeply human, propulsive core.