A wholly unexpected medical diagnosis tells Abby Taylor that her life, the somewhat lonely yet satisfying life of a single 40-something professor of Old English at Vassar College, can never be the same. Attractive, well-liked, highly esteemed in her field, Abby has always stood up determinately to the buffets of fate. But now she finds herself runningrunning both from the past with its personal tragedies and from the disease that threatens her future with failing kidneys and impending dialysis. She runs as the deer from the mountain lion or the elk from the huntera blind reaction triggered by the instinct for survival.
However, a person can run just so long and Flagstaff, Arizona, seems to Abby like as good a place as any to lite for the summer. An intriguing man and a darling corgi dog add to the appeal. A great climate, breathtaking scenery, and hardly the crime capital of northern Arizona, as Abby reassures her sister. Or is it? A stolen classic Alfa Romeo, ominous doings in the forest, eco-warriors on the loose, and ultimately the deathor is it the murder?of a close friend suggest otherwise. From the moment of diagnosis Abby has known that she would have to fight to maintain her sense of self in the face of the major life-changes demanded by her disease, but will she also have to fight for life itself? Will she live or die in Arizona?