The Silence Doctrine

Dr. Lena Calder is the world's foremost expert on cults. She knows how they recruit, how they control, and how they convince ordinary people to surrender everything. Her knowledge is professional—and deeply personal. She understands the machinery of cults from the inside. She was raised in one. Now she works to tear them apart. South of San Francisco, a mountain retreat offers something the modern world has forgotten how to provide: silence. Amidst the overwhelm of smartphones, digital addiction, and pervasive mass media, The Solen Center offers people suffering from anxiety, distraction, and stress a unique path to relief. No phones. No talking. Only the body, the breath, and a focus on one's hands. People arrive burned out and leave utterly transformed. The waiting list runs to months. But unbeknownst to them, inside the therapeutic practice is a secret that turns visitors into future unwitting operatives—committing acts for some of the world's most dangerous people, with no memory of having done so. A peculiar nineteen-minute gap in three apparently unrelated crimes leads Lena to the Solen Center. What she finds there suggests thousands of untraceable, unsolved crimes. But the only way to prove it is for Lena to join.