Caroline Studeman is a bright young physician with everything to live for: a new marriage, a baby on the way and deep relationships with youngsters who need her healing touch.

I remember the first day I met Caroline, in the summer of 1996.  I was new to UNC, and had just driven up to a party I’d been invited to by a friend’s wife.  Caroline leapt into the air to catch a Frisbee.  She turned as she landed, then twisted and took a long lunge, throwing it back with a quick snap in her wrist.  When I stopped my vintage convertible, she looked up at me, still in her Frisbee launching position.  Her hair was blown, and a bit of sweat stuck a long brown strand to her forehead. 

But her path to adulthood was marked by secrets and grief that even her husband knows nothing about. When a terrible accident leaves her comatose, the walls she built to protect her past begin to crumble. As her family and friends reconstruct the shocking truths of her childhood and her tumultuous years at the N.C. School of Science and Mathematics, old hurts and grievances emerge.

The campus was an old nursing school which hadn’t been used for decades.  My own dormitory, Wyche Hall, was old, with finicky plumbing and an energetic and vibrant insect population.  Across the street was the husk of a building that had yet to be rebuilt, the 1908 building, which was fenced off and “condemned.” 

While working through the issues surrounding the accident, Caroline’s family finally learns the depths of her love – and they learn what they must do to bring healing into their own lives.

She was out for an hour, and when she came in I pretended to be asleep and rolled over groggily as she showered quickly, then joined me in the bed.  I never knew whether she would talk.  I knew she would, eventually.  And she knew I would listen, whenever she was ready.  She was my troubled princess, and I her safe harbor.  Among only a few other things, that is what made our marriage work.