A hurricane strikes the Elysium Spa, and a gentle android named Tender can only save one of his guests – a fifteen-year-old girl named Virgo.  She has the innocence of an infant – the Spa guests are born, reproduce, and die in scientifically calibrated baths that keep them in a state of perpetual ecstasy, called Joy. She has never walked, or spoken, or had a cogent thought.

Tender’s sole purpose is to return Virgo to the state of bliss that is her birthright. He takes her on a journey across a post-American landscape depopulated by war, famine, and plague. On the road, they meet other travelers on the New Frontier, including a scientist in search of life’s greatest secret, a group of First Nations warriors seeking to reclaim their stolen land, and a young power thief fleeing forced labor, looking for a better life and his lost family.

As Tender and Virgo struggle to survive, they face a choice — embrace this painful, beautiful world, or return her to an existence of mindless, but perfect, Joy.