From the celebrated author of The Palace Thief and Emperor of the Air comes this stunning novel about the relationship between two very different men and a woman they love. Orno Tarcher travels from a small town in Missouri to New York City, where he strikes up a friendship with Marshall Emerson, a charismatic and brilliant New Yorker who lives in a world Orno never would have imagined. And in that seductive world, as he gradually comes to know it, Orno finds both desperation and glamour, destruction and love.