On the fringe of the Remaining States of America, down-at-heel Boston PI Arbert Smif struggles to come to terms with his dishonourable discharge from the Papal Army and with the brutal disciplinary process—the Dante-inspired Purgatorio—that led to it. When a senior official from Saskatchewan-based multinational Cortical Gleam Biomechanical Systems hires him to discreetly look into the disappearance of some prototype tech from a Massachusetts testing facility, his life seems to be looking up. Especially when they upgrade his own brain implants. But he soon realizes that his corporate minder is keeping things from him. Dangerous things.

From the office towers of the Boston Islands to a white supremacist compound in the Blue Ridge Mountains to a salvaged and relocated New Orleans in the Texas-Louisiana Commonwealth, Tendrils is a fast-paced narrative and a lively exploration of technology and power, dogma and despair, the persistence of racism, and the heartbreak of betrayal.