Melissa's marriage into a traditional farming family was a mistake. Mathew came from a line of men who had thrown physical fury at the land until it was tamed. His aggressive conservatism and the Deeps Farm culture are ubiquitous. Nobody meant to drive Melissa mad, but a bigoted husband and a mother-in-law with an incestuous agenda create the perfect conditions for the disease to take root.

Melissa decides to recreate herself, like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis, better to live briefly than to remain dully earth-bound. Sexuality, metamorphosis and flight become dangerously interwoven. When she encounters her Incubus, the dream lover, it is inevitable that the affair will end in a violent reckoning.