Psychiatrist Grace Rendeau struggles to make sense of her husband’s untimely death. Left a widow with two children, Grace forges a new life for her family, abandoning her private practice and moving to Minnesota to take on a prestigious position at the Rochester Forensic Center for the Criminally Insane, work that will allow her to spend more time with her children.

At the Center Grace is immersed in a maelstrom of lives in disarray, the anguish and struggle of the inmates to regain a footing in sanity and face the devastating consequences of their criminal actions. In striving to heal her patients, Grace herself finds healing, a new strength, and a sense of possibilities.

Among the possibilities is a budding romance with Alex Sawyer, a divorced doctor engaged in humanitarian work. Romance blossoms into love and Grace accompanies Alex on a medical mission to Indonesia. They return committed to a new life together.

But their joy is short lived. Grace returns home not to her children, but to an empty House – and a chilling kidnapper’s note. It makes no demands and holds out no hope for the return of the children. It is clearly an act of pure vengeance.

Suspects are legion: a disgruntled security guard at the center with a grudge against Grace; Alex’s bitter ex-wife; a recently escaped insane inmate. Enemies known and unknown haunt Grace’s every waking hour. Where are her children? What has happened to them? Who is attempting to destroy her?

Grace’s riveting story illuminates the hopes and fears of every wife or husband, mother or father, woman or man, caught in life’s turmoil and striving to overcome it.