Iraq War veteran Harper Jennings copes with physical scars as well as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, but she's determined to move on with her life. In fact, she's studying archeology and working as a teaching assistant at Cornell University. Together with her husband, Hank Jennings, she's renovating an old Victorian-style house. Life is rosy, At least it is until Hank, doing repairs, falls off the roof. And though he survives the fall, he sustains a brain injury resulting in aphasia, a condition that interferes with his speech. Harper takes him to Cayuga Neurological Center, a leading institution in medical research. And Hank seems to make progress. Hank's accident aroused Harper's flashbacks, but she's tough and continues her life, teaching her classes, spending time with Hank in the hospital. She manages to maintain equilibrium until one hot day, in the middle of class, one of her students jumps out the fourth floor classroom window. From then on, Harper's life becomes an unpredictable roller coaster ride. She finds experimental drugs, stolen from the Neurological Center, in her dead student's book bag. Her home is ransacked and she's assaulted. More bodies turn up--some connected to the Center, but all of whom are connected to Harper. She struggles with debilitating flashbacks, worries about Hank, fights to protect her students from stolen drug, and agonizes over the conflicting feelings she has for Ron Kendall, Hank's supportive and caring doctor. Harper's life becomes more and more complicated as, caught in webs of deceit, revenge, ambition, suicide, theft, and murder, she struggles to figure out who's causing the mayhem before more of her students, Hank and herself fall prey.
