Ara Lucia Ashburne is a talented 35-year old woman, with a burgeoning creative life and a blossoming psychotherapy practice. When she and her husband try to start a family, things go horribly awry and she lands in intensive care. For two months she teeters at death's edge, largely separated from the world we know. Medically paralyzed, she is caught in a hyperreal dream world of pure suffering—terrorized by hideous creatures and only fleetingly aware of events transpiring around her. Astonishingly, she survives, though the Ara Lucia she knew is gone: her body is cratered, her mind shattered. No one can tell her how long it might take her to recover, if ever. Facing an unknowable future, she is enveloped by depression, until years later, when a chance event sparks her long-dormant creative side. Once Ara's healing begins, her body soon follows suit, and she embarks on a 3600-mile solo expedition.