Hugo Award Winner

Locus Poll Award Nominee

Asimov's Reader's Choice Award Nominee

It is thirty years since the turn of the second millennium, and University of Wisconsin professor Brooke Cross is approached by a colleague in the sociology department to participate in his study of successful—and unsuccessful—Millennium Babies. Brooke was one of the unsuccessful ones. She was born at five minutes past midnight 2000, and the extra four minutes cost her mother the fame and fortune of having the first baby of the new millenium—and has never let her forget it. As Brooke progresses through the unorthodox tests and meetings, she is forced to confront the bitter relationship she has with her mother, and the overpowering sense of failure that has haunted her since childhood.