Robin Danvers has just crossed that dreaded milestone marked forty. Though bruised by much in her past - a charming, but feckless father; a cold, distant mother; a sad first marriage - she is still hopeful. An accountant who actually loves the numerical mess of other people's lives, she took a risk two years ago when she married a client, who, it turns out, is the embodiment of the raffishly bohemian artist she had always dreamed of. Indeed Paul is very much the aging hippy...but a talented one. A professor of art and an accomplished purveyor of intricate line drawings, he brings a discipline to his visual work that is contradicted by his need for chaos. And this tendency toward disorder has brought instability to a marriage that Robin is determined will thrive. When Paul suggests a month in Morocco, where he once taught, a place where the modern meets the medieval, she reluctantly agrees. But once dropped into the swirling, white hot exotica of a walled city on the North African Atlantic coast, Robin finds herself acclimatizing to the wonderful strangeness of Morocco. Until, out of nowhere, life back home in the States intervenes, and Robin is made aware of a lie that explodes her marriage. When Paul suddenly disappears, Robin finds herself the prime suspect in the police inquiry. So begins her desperate attempt to save her husband from himself and her journey down an increasingly terrifying spiral from which there is no easy escape.