The Science of Understanding: A Novel

Dr. Green's prized research chimpanzee is kidnapped and now the hunt for this unusually intelligent primate has exploded into violence.

...Rory's in a tight spot. Technically, she's in a lab refrigerator, hiding for her life. Who just stormed the primate facility with a gun, leaving the lab tech Andy shot through the neck, dead in a pool of his own blood? For Rory, survival consists of folding herself into the only hiding place available to live another day, affording her the opportunity to search for answers to the violence raging around her. And of course, the mystery of her missing research chimpanzee.

A quiet life in Columbus, Ohio is upended as scientist Rory Green finds herself playing the part of sleuth, searching for one of her company’s kidnapped primates as the authorities’ disinterest and dragging feet make life unbearable. Absent colleagues and antagonistic bosses aren’t helping either.

Rory’s research involves animal/human communication. At one time a hot field in military research, it is now in the hands of a small group of scientists dedicated to the behavior and techniques of interspecies understanding. This core of scientists, at one time, included her late father and one of his associates Dr. Porter, a professor at Butler University and Rory’s “adopted” intellectual mother. As she struggles to find clues, Rory recruits old and new friends to help, and in the process digs up shocking secrets that threaten to blow up more in her life than her scientific endeavors, endangering the primates around her–both human and chimpanzee.

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Release date

Audiobook: 19 August 2025