As a young teacher on Martha's Vineyard, Mary Lambert feels restless and adrift. So when a league of missionaries invite her to travel abroad, she knows it's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Paris is home to a pioneering deaf school where she could meet its visionary instructors Jean Massieu and Laurent Clerc--and bring back their methods to America. But the endeavor comes at a cost: The missionaries' plan to "save" deaf children is questionable...

"The lawyer, the jeweler, the art critic, and the oil-company man...self-possessed, independent Lora Winter has had a child with each of them. But when one of these men drives up to her house with a fifth man in the car, Lora runs to hide...a masterful psychological jigsaw puzzle that is miles from a traditional crime novel, but whose desperate characters nevertheless resort to kidnapping, blackmail and possibly even murder"--