Versailles: A novel | Yannick Hill
Welcome to Versailles, an oceanfront mega-mansion, 100 rooms of technologically breathtaking real estate, tailor-made for Casey Baer, founder and CEO of the internet’s pre-eminent social network. He’s the closest thing the online generation has to royalty, and this is his palace. But all is not well in this concrete shell of one man’s American Dream. His wife, Synthea, once the world’s foremost industrial designer, roams the corridors in a drugged dream state. His son, River, locks himself away in his room, living vicariously through dozens of virtual pseudonyms. And Missy, his daughter, has just deleted her online profile and driven away through the gates, never to return. As River tries to track his sister down, he alights upon Deep Sky. Is it a cult? And if so, what do they want with Missy? Is she running away from home or toward a darker mystery? And why? Is it something Casey did? Versailles is a fable for the digital age. In an era of perpetual connectivity and mass surveillance, the novel explores our dual need to be witnessed and to be alone.