One afternoon in a leafy New York City suburb, Walter Mitchell walks into the local police station and turns himself in for kidnapping thirteen-year-old Amanda Jonette, his daughter's best friend. The police chief tells him to go home - no one wants to prosecute. But Walter refuses, and is finally arrested and charged.

This is a novel about a man who is faced with temptation but does not succumb; the extraordinary relationship that develops between he and his beloved and the bond between these bright, lost, individuals as the painful inevitability of the end draws near.