Franz, college prof and lapsed poet, is from Ganaego’s famous chocolate-making family (well, famous in Ganaego), and Ellen is a somewhat unconventional real estate agent.

Having lost their only child, the fifteen-year-old Jean, in an accident whose circumstances remain ambiguous, Franz and Ellen discover themselves alone again, premature empty-nesters, but not alone together. At some point in the year of their recovery that the novel traces, Franz realizes that as much as you may wish to come to grips with tragedy, you can’t. What you come to grips with is the new person tragedy makes of you.

Inside the novel is a second novel, a series of fanciful and rueful stories about Jean that Franz begins secretly writing as a way of dealing with his grief. It will be these clandestine Jean stories, in fact, that bring their marriage to a crisis point.