Sam Parker, a morally upstanding guy gives up his dreams of becoming a writer to marry Joanna Melrose, whom he has a one-night encounter with while in college that ends in her becoming pregnant. Sam soon learns that Joanna has a history of mental illness that eventually causes Sam to live a life of sacrifice and disillusionment while they raise their son together. Although Sam achieves success as a copyright attorney, eventually becoming a partner in his firm, his life holds little joy other than his love for his son, Jamie.Joanna, for her part, is often unable to view her life through a clear lens. She ebbs and flows through mood cycles ranging from severe mania to suicidal depression. Though her conduct is often out of her control, her self-sabotaging behaviors cause destruction to her marriage and emotional harm to her son as she slowly spirals downward.When Jamie goes off to college, Sam retreats to a small cabin on the Olympic Peninsula to write the novel he's always dreamed of writing. There on a tiny, remote farm, nestled deep in the forest, he meets beautiful, bohemian, Esme, a mysterious black-blood Roma who can read fortunes with eerie precision and is rumored to have psychic powers. Together, Esme and Sam are swept up in a passion that changes their lives forever and forces Sam to accept the inevitable choice he is predestined to make. A touch of magical realism nuanced throughout the novel leaves the reader with a sense of hope and wonder that will stay in the reader's mind after the book is finished