Imagine that every human who ever lived, from the earliest Neanderthals to the modern man, is resurrected after death on the banks of an astonishing and seemingly endless river on an unknown world. They are miraculously provided with food, but with not a clue to the possible meaning of this strange afterlife. And so billions of people from history, and before, must start living again. Some set sail on the great river questing for the meaning of their resurrection, and to find and confront their mysterious benefactors. On this long journey we meet Sir Richard Francis Burton, Mark Twain, Odysseus, Cyrano de Bergerac, and many others, most of whom embark upon searches of their own in this huge afterlife.