An enigmatic, erotically-charged portrait seems to reveal more about the people who view it than it reveals about itself. As the painting moves backward in time, it passes from owner to owner, exploding the lives of everyone who encounters it. In one home, the portrait tips the balance in a barely-suppressed power struggle among the members of a well-to-do family. In another, it awakens a great deal of confusion—and passion—between two former fraternity brothers. In the home of the portrait’s subject, it inspires nothing but unrequited love and alienation between two dear friends. And finally, back in the moment of its creation, where the story both ends and begins, the painting incites a terrible violence… the tragedy that haunts it wherever it travels, and that cannot be escaped.

“Dextrous theatricality and unexpected pleasure… bowled over by the suppleness of the writing.” — Peter Marks, Washington Post