In a moment, in every part of the world, every person with an Y chromosome vanishes: lovers, children, parents - even foetuses from the womb. Jane Pearson wakes on a mountainside the next morning to find her husband and son missing from their tent. Frantic and grieving, she sets out to find the one person she thinks can help - Evangelyne Moreau, the brilliant, charismatic leader of the Commensalist Party of America, whose heart she broke many years before. While Jane searches for those she has lost, a radically different society emerges, one that seems - at first - to be suddenly, blissfully safer than what came before. And then The Men appears online: uncanny video footage that shows the missing being herded through bizarre, otherworldly landscapes. Is it a hoax, or could The Men hold the key to bringing back those who were lost? And if so, what might be the cost?