George Mahoney suspects he is getting a little stale at redesigning refrigerators, the job he has held for fourteen years. His new office mate, Niagara Spense, is six feet tall, has cloth-brown hair and glasses thicker than George's, and wears a different color of the same homemade dress every day. George cannot stop thinking about her, despite the fact that he is married and the father of two.

They come to electrical engineering from opposite directions: while George is wedded to facts and the physical world, Niagara considers electricity a mysterious life force flowing behind walls and throughout the nerves of the body.

Soon the gangly girl scientist tells George of her quest for electrical evidence of life after death - audible fossils she calls them - and her revelation compounds George's crises of faith in his puny belief system, his marriage, and his career. Ready to leave his icemakers and butter softeners behind, George finds he has a personal stake in Niagara's astral projections.

By the end of this extraordinary novel, Niagara has opened many doors for George, and ultimately she opens him up to the cosmos, where he learns the truth that allows him to claim the life that is his.