Having endured countless jealous rages, unfounded accusations and extreme possessiveness in their relationship, Rachel Leben cannot be blamed for feeling less than heartbroken when her ex-husband is killed. Her slight relief turns to terror, however, when her ex's body goes missing from the morgue and someone begins stalking her. Rachel seems to know who is after her, but getting anyone else to believe...
The novel opens in England in 1915, at the deathbed of Dorothy Townsend, a suffragist and one of the first women to integrate Cambridge University. Her decision to starve herself for the cause informs and echoes in the later, overlapping narratives of her descendants. Among them are her daughter Evie, who becomes a professor of chemistry at Barnard College in the middle of the century and never marries...