Maggie Franklin plays by the rules but lives in a world of people driven by competing motivations, leading to conflict and betrayal, touching those closest to her. She works at a high-end PR firm in Nashville, Tennessee, owned by Richard Gadly, who occupies the gray space between legal and illegal in the intersecting spheres of business and politics.

The way she sees herself clashes with the reality of her work: co-workers hustling and violent; the success of her boyfriend's career, dependent on the crooks she's desperate to avoid; and the need to control events by the instinct to survive. In the background lurks the creeping authoritarianism infecting Western democracies.

The history of jazz provides a soft thread connecting the book's characters. If experiencing jazz can be thought of as discovery, so too is the evolution of complicated individuals, sketched in vivid detail, revealed against the struggle for power. Within that struggle is a story about identity - who we are now versus the people we used to be.