"The memory starts here, in my apron pocket, with the gun."

Lydia Haas is devoted to Jesus, her church, and her husband. Only recently, after it's too late, has she understood how much she has sacrificed to all of them.

Michael Knowles is a rising young doctor, an OB/gyn at a prominent hospital. A man committed to his principles, to rescues with uncertain outcomes; to his wife. The life they've made. He never intended to have to make a choice.

Annie Knowles is the "doctor's wife." The first time she walked into their 1812 Federal-style home in High Meadow, an idyllic town in upstate New York, she thought she'd be happy there forever. But that dream wore thin, and another man - a colleague at the local college where Annie teaches - is insinuating himself slowly, surely, passionately into her life.

Simon Haas' paintings of his wife Lydia - dating from when she was a child - made him famous. The story behind those paintings, and behind his marriage, is not one Simon chooses to tell. Until he meets Annie Knowles.

Elizabeth Brundage's stunning debut work of fiction is the story of these four and the cataclysmic intersection of their lives.

© Copyright 2004 by Plume.