Sleepwalk

Judith Sheffield returns to her New Mexico hometown to teach high school math after burning out in the city. Back in Borrego, she reconnects with old acquaintances and quickly notices that the town’s teens and other residents are changing in disturbing ways.

As strange illnesses, deaths, and compliant behavior spread, Judith teams up with local allies, including a refinery worker, his troubled teenage son, and the boy’s grandfather. Together they investigate the refinery, the supposedly routine flu shots, and the outside interests moving in on the town.

The mystery widens into a conspiracy involving medical manipulation, corporate power, and the town’s uneasy relationship with the nearby reservation and its people. The story builds toward a tense confrontation in which the characters try to expose what is happening before more people are controlled or killed.