Genny Haviland is on trial for her life…and her love. Flash back twenty years, to a time of sexual awakening for seventeen year-old Genny. She has plunged into an affair of turbulent passion with Slade Gabriel, a man twice her age who has recently joined her father's gallery as one of its most exciting and controversial artists. During their brief time together, Gabriel etches himself into Genny's body and soul. When he discovers that she is the daughter of his patron, he ends the affair, which makes him the love and loss of her life. Two decades later, they meet again and nothing has changed: the connection, the sense of destiny, everything pulls them together until the spark turns to conflagration….and then tragedy. Gabriel learns that his future will be not Genny, but a slow and agonizing death. He implores her to help him end his life.

Using the courtroom as the fulcrum from which the story springs, M.J. Rose weaves a tale of obsession, eroticism, and mystery. It is about a family in crisis, a woman and man whose love has been painted from a palette of vibrant and primitive colors. Flesh Tones asks the ultimate question: to what extremes do we go when someone we love asks for our help to die?