A crime of unfathomable horror has a ripple-like effect on four profoundly different souls. Helen, a troubled inmate at Sloatsburg women's prison, is serving a life sentence for the murder of her children. Dr. Louise Forrest, the recently divorced mother of an eight-year-old boy, has foresworn the Park Avenue practice for which she trained in favor of the chief of psychiatry job at Sloatsburg. Former New York City narcotics detective Ike Bradshaw is a sardonic corrections officer at the prison. And Angie, an ambitious Hollywood starlet, is intent on nothing but achieving fame. As the alternating narratives unfold, mysteries are revealed and the surprising connection between them is uncovered.

Susanna Moore is the author of the novels In the Cut, The Whiteness of Bones, Sleeping Beauties, and My Old Sweetheart, and a book of nonfiction, I Myself Have Seen It. She lives in New York City.