To change the world, you need to take risks. That's something Carol Schwartz knows bone deep. And it's something she's prepared to do. She learned about risk as a girl. She never understood why, but her father chose to go to Vietnam and she never saw him again. Now Carol, a Berkeley-educated idealist, tutors high school students. A Jewish lesbian, she's a community activist in Oakland. And she's learned to take risks of her own. She gambles her inheritance, her love, even her own well-being. Across the years—from the mid-eighties to the post-9/11 world—the stakes get ever higher and her gambles more desperate. Until finally Carol finds out just what's left when the last gamble is lost.