A literary novel with suspense and erotic undertones that opens on New Year's Eve 1898. Emma Smith has just informed the reader that "For seventeen years I was a good - some might say exemplary - wife. It is important that you know this about me from the start." That night, she resolves to, during the course of the next year, become "a better person." Her husband John, a writer, suggests that she do so by striking up a correspondence with a convicted murderer who he thinks does not deserve to be in prison for his crime. The prisoner, Chance Wood, initially wants nothing to do with Emma, but then his letters become more heated and Emma learns that the real definition of vertigo is not the fear of falling, but the fear of wanting to fall. As the following New Year's approaches, and the world gets ready for 1900, Queen Victoria announces - at the suggestion of an advisor who states that this will make her look more progressive - that she will free certain prisoners that do not pose a real threat to society and who can get an upstanding citizen to petition for them. But by the time Chance is freed, Emma finds that she is in a prison of her own making. Unable or unwilling to merely turn away from the only world she has ever known in order to achieve what she wants, she becomes convinced that if she is to ever have her Chance, then her husband must die.