Book excerpt: Devastated by the sudden loss of her father, Imogene Mussomeli is left adrift, engulfed by a profound sense of loneliness and despair. Though she's an accomplished woman, she feels like a vulnerable little girl again. Despondent and questioning her entire life, she takes a leave from her prestigious university job and returns to her family's Midwest home, hoping to recover and help her mother, who's just been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. There, Imogene might have been swallowed up into the abyss of her suffocating grief were it not for a fortuitous discovery among her father's personal effects. He may have been in the possession of a very rare and valuable book. Now on a mission, Imogene is lifted out of her morass as she embarks on a wild treasure hunt-her oblivious mother and ill-behaved companion Chihuahua in tow. It takes her all the way back to her father's childhood home in Upstate New York where she executes a daring plan to find the lost "treasure." After hair-raising moments and encounters, Imogene makes her great escape and appears to have the windfall of a lifetime... that is, until her grand scheme backfires in disastrous fashion. And she realizes she is about to lose everything and everyone she ever cared about.