At the age of twenty, a troubled young man named Peter joins a Benedictine monastery in upstate New York and over the course of ten years finds a peace and serenity such as he has never known. Then one day a young poet and novelist named Lauren Wolfe visits the monastery to make use of their library. As she is handing him a book, Peter catches sight of the scar—the hesitation cut—on her wrist, and from that moment on he can’t forget her. Somehow ensnared by her pain, he comes to believe he can help her, perhaps even save her, and so he follows her to New York City where he finds himself whirled ever deeper into a maelstrom of passion, obsession, and violence from which no one may get out alive.