What if humanity’s next great leap forward didn’t begin with science—or war—but with the awakening of a child?

The Ushering is the debut novel by Kenneth Lee Horton, a master storyteller known for shaping iconic television series like Smallville, The X-Files, and Millennium. With this novel, Horton turns inward—away from the screen and into the soul.

Set across decades and continents, The Ushering is a psychological thriller that weaves suspense, mysticism, and raw emotional depth. At its core is Cassandra Ha Joon Conway, a girl marked by an extraordinary destiny after a surreal childhood encounter with a dying man on a Chicago beach. As she grows, her journey intertwines with soldiers, scientists, and spiritual seekers—all pulled into a quiet revolution destined to alter the course of human evolution.

Told in a tone that is at once dark, unsettling, and powerfully inspirational, this is a story not just about survival, but transcendence. A meditation on what it means to be human—and what we may yet become.