Lucy’s brother, Mikey, is dead. Two years ago, when he left their small Eastern Colorado town and moved west to Denver, he had intended to bring Lucy along. But Lucy has only just arrived and is in search of Helen, a woman Mikey loved. But when Lucy moves in across the hall, she finds nothing is as she expected: the city is crumbling; the weather is tempestuous; a predator is on the loose; the old woman in the attic needs company; desire is being compressed into pills and distributed like candy; and she finds herself becoming obsessed with Helen, who is nothing like she expected --- and who has no idea who Lucy really is. As their lives become more entwined, Lucy begins to realize that the real reasons she came to Denver are deeper and stranger than a simple desire to understand what happened to her brother.