Many years ago, Iris Greenfeder's mother disappeared. They were living at Hotel Equinox where Iris's father was the manager and where her mother wrote delicate, powerful fantasies. Then one day, she took a train and never returned. She was found dead in a hotel fire in Brooklyn, registered as another man's wife.

Returning to Hotel Equinox, Iris needs to find the truth about her mother; there are some clues in her writing, and others in the memories of those who knew her. Kay Greenfeder, it seems, was a women without a past. But as Iris begins to untangle the secrets of years before, she realises that the past was very different to what she had believed, and much more dangerous...