Paris, the teenage daughter of a retired rock songwriter, is brilliant, eccentric, and increasingly drawn toward questioning why she's alive. She spends her time at UC Berkeley writing quirky songs, with lyrics that seem far more important to her than grades, success, stability, or the future everyone has planned for her.

As she becomes more involved in her existential questioning and drops out of college, the distance between Paris and her parents begins to widen.

Her profound intellectual and creative relationship with her father ?conversations about life, mortality, and music?suddenly seems depressing, unnecessary, unsettling.

Then Paris disappears.

She is not on the run. She is running toward something. But no one?not her parents, or even Paris herself?fully understands what that something is.

Through infrequent texts and emails Paris remains deeply connected to her father, often reaching out with songs, ideas, and fragments of hard-won insight. Yet even that bond is not enough to change the path she's compelled to follow.

As Paris travels farther into a world of her own making, those left behind struggle with concerns and fears that have no resolution.

How tightly should we hold on to the people we love to keep them safe? And what happens when someone's search for meaning and inner peace takes them beyond the limits of reason?

This literary novel about empty-nesters and their brilliant daughter understands how love can be genuine and mutual, but can still be powerless against the shape of a mind determined to go where others cannot follow.