Hadley Dunn arrives in Lausanne, a glamorous Swiss city on the shores of Lake Geneva, where she is to spend her second year at university living abroad. From the beginning, Lausanne is imbued with a boundless sense of freedom and promise. Here, Hadley meets Kristina, a beautiful but ill-fated Danish girl, and the two bond quickly, tripping through the city with abandon. But one November night, on Hadley's twentieth birthday, Kristina dies in a tragic accident. Grief-stricken and burdened with guilt, Hadley resolves to find her friend's mysteriously absent boyfriend, Jacques. So begins a search that will consume her, the city she loves and the lives of two very different men; Ralph Wilson, a charismatic American Literature professor; and Hugo Bezier, a solitary retired crime writer, who with Hadley's unwitting help, rediscovers his appetite for story.