Sam has embarked on an arduous dogsled odyssey to discover the place where his son Paul died in the arctic.  Hadley has settled on the Maine coast where she tries to cope with Paul's death while resurrecting her painting career.

Waiting for their divorce to be finalized, Sam and Hadley begin a correspondence which reconstructs the good and bad times of their life together and tries to make sense of the tragedy that has struck their family.

The authors' expository approach offers an interesting take that lays bare the inner workings of a marriage gone terribly wrong for a variety of reasons.