He's twenty-three years old and already a prodigy, a critically acclaimed author of whom great things are expected--immediately ... But artistic success and happiness will not come easily to Chub Fuller. Like many writers, he will find himself descending again and again into the lower reaches of his psyche, driven by the phantoms of his past, the obsessive passions of others--and finally, by a murder that brings him face to face with the darkest forces within us all ...