Annie James is a young physics graduate student at UCLA. A former foster kid, Annie's only biological family is her aunt Emma and her only friend is Kate, a fellow physics grad student whom she shares a graduate office with. One boring Saturday afternoon, Annie recognizes someone from her old high school playing a free outdoor piano concert at the Third Street Promenade. Jarod Villanueva is a brilliant and attractive pianist who recently graduated from Julliard and went to High School with Annie.

After the concert, Jarod enters a coffee shop and Annie follows him inside. Before they can say hello, an explosion kills them and transports their consciousness to a planet called Diastasis. Meanwhile, back on Earth, mysterious explosions continue around the world with no apparent link to terrorism. Within months, the entire infrastructure of human society is lost. It's a good thing billionaire computer scientist, Dave Campbell, prepared a huge underground bunker in Colorado that houses thousands! Could Dave be behind the explosions or is there a greater mystery hiding beneath?

"The Return Diaries: Rebirth" is a 55,000 word science fiction romance for new adults. It is the first arc of a trilogy. The setting of the story is a multiverse where consciousness does not cease to exist when we die. After death, human consciousness is transported to a planet in an inescapable alternate universe. Annie and Jarod get sent to Diastasis but they quickly discover that Annie has natural abilities that allow her to navigate the very tides of the consciousness-time dimension. As Annie tests out her powers she discovers the person she could have been, had she not been too afraid to live.