Kasch is a lonely eccentric man in his forties who has survived a bitterly disappointing marriage only to fall in love, against his will, with a fourteen-year-old named Laney. An inhabitant of a distant, improverished region--Childwold--Laney embodies all that Kasch finds fatally irresistible. As Kasch succumbs to the beauty and mystery of Childwold and Laney's family, his control over his destiny loosens and he is plunged into personal catastrophe, even as Laney and her family are freed.