Synapse is a YA sci-fi novel set in the very near future, where an unscrupulous neurologist sees the damaged brain as an oyster to be shucked for its pearls of wisdom.
When Jake's twin brother, Gabriel, is left severely brain damaged by a near drowning accident, Jake is convinced it's his fault. Every Sunday for nine years, Jake visits Gabriel at the institution. At the point when Jake has lost hope that his brother even knows he's there, Dr. Ryder arrives on the scene. "Your brother might still be thinking and feeling, trapped inside an unresponsive body," she says. "I could set him free."
What Jake doesn't know is that Dr. Ryder is not driven by a desire to help the mentally disabled. She's motivated by the need to extract a lucrative secret from the brain of Terra O'Hare, a formerly brilliant scientist who suffered a near drowning "accident" very similar to Gabriel's. Dr. Ryder hopes to use what she learns from Jake and Gabriel's twin brains to get into Terra's.
Dr. Ryder has experimented before. Amnesia is one of her few surviving patients. With street smarts and a tough exterior Amnesia escapes from Dr. Ryder's death row laboratory and becomes a powerful force in the mission to save Jake, Gabriel, and Terra from certain death.
Synapse takes actual research in neurological science, and plays what-if with the idea that there can be a good and a bad side to pushing science to its limits. The novel is told from three different points of view - Jake's, Terra's, and Amnesia's. Starting separately, the stories become entwined as the tension builds.
