Harper Roland has abandoned his job as a war correspondent, and returned home a weary, jaded 37-year-old. Uncertain of the future but determined to move forward with his life, he begins a search for enduring love-hoping he will also regain the ability to see the beauty of the world.

Along the way, he meets an intellectually gifted but emotionally absent doctor, a beautiful Parisian artist who burns too hot to the touch, and a human rights lawyer who has left New York in search of a more centered life.

The novel's sweeping tale encompasses four continents-where prior assumptions are constantly tested, and men who cling too passionately to certainty unleash destruction-and ultimately leads Harper back to the chaos he was trying to escape. The result is a startlingly fresh view of the contemporary world, in which place and history are mere starting points for the deeper journey into the geography of the human heart.

Calvin Baker is the author of the brilliantly-acclaimed novels Naming the New World, Once Two Heroes and Dominion, which was a finalist for the Hurston-Wright Award, a New York Magazine Critics’ Pick and New York Daily News Best Book of the Year. He has taught at Columbia University, in the Graduate School of the Arts, and at the University of Leipzig, Germany as Picador Professor of American Studies. He grew up in Chicago and currently lives in New York.