A message from her father draws Barbara back to Eugene, back to the law practice she had abandoned in order to defend Nell Kendricks, accused of murdering her husband Lucas, who had been shot on the day he reappeared after an unexplained absence of seven years. Plunged into the mystery of his disappearance, chaos theory experiments, and computer disks with beautiful and strange Mandlebrot and Julia sets, Barbara has to battle not only the legal system, but larger and more menacing threats from those who would keep secret their involvement with Lucas Kendricks. It only complicates matters when Barbara falls in love with a mathematician whom she seeks out for help with understanding the disks.