There is always a still, quiet space before tragedy, when the future is known to the spirit and the soul quakes with the coming. In an age before the great flood when the world was new, the beauty of one young woman drew more than admiring glances. Atarah saw the stranger in her troubled dreams before he approached her. All he wanted was a drink from her jug of water. But of course, a drink was not all he wanted. She escaped the Watcher, Semjaza, until after her marriage to her father's wealthy relative, Naaman. Semjaza came to her in a moment of weakness when she needed a kind touch, and with the lie she told her husband her journey to the abyss began. How could one mistake change the course of her life? And how would she escape Naaman's wrath and find redemption?