Louise Goldblum is the new "it" girl on the San Francisco art scene, a sculptor on the cusp of national stardom, when her beloved older sister Esther is shot and killed in a motel room in an old California ghost town. Esther's sudden, mysterious death sends Louise into a tailspin of mourning and, after a night of hard drinking, into the arms of Zeke Heirholm, a controversial photographer.. "At first, Zeke's hypnotic charms seem to offer Louise escape from the haunting events of her life - including her tumultuous childhood as the youngest member of the eccentric Goldblum family. But as Louise's trysts with Zeke become increasingly violent, so, too, does the power of her memories. The further Louise becomes entangled in Zeke's web, the deeper her mind retreats into the buried layers of her past, revisiting the turbulent and often self-destructive episodes that typified the Goldblum clan. Desperate to escape her chaotic past and tortured present, Louise risks everything - her career as an artist, her relationship with her family - in hopes of carving a path through the debris of her sister's death and her own shattered life.