Frank Kohler is ready to snap. He is capable of love, but he knows time is running out. His mother was brutally murdered, and he never knew his father. With each passing day he perceives his anger with an almost religious sense of beauty. In an attempt to save himself, he decides to marry a mail-order bride from Russia.

Russell Boyd is a state trooper who resists those acts that damage life forever. He has seen about as much of them as he can take. And yet, he has met the woman who makes him feel whole. She is the center of his life.

Frank Kohler's and Russell Boyd's paths will cross three times. And the third time will change everything. It is the moment when the line between good and evil is made dramatically clear.

As with such modern classics as Dennis Lehane's Mystic River and Graham Greene's The Heart of the Matter, Craig Nova gives us an illuminating story of characters who struggle against the collisions of fate, and who are motivated by the touching need to be human.