On divorce, Dan puts his months-old daughter, Lise, out for adoption. 17 years later, he comes down with an inherited disease, Vlad's Syndrome, which is fatal when it erupts in middle-age, but curable in the young.

Dan must find his long-lost daughter—at once—and get her to treatment. He tracks Lise throughout the West, then to Mexico where he frees her from a manic fellow student.