Karen Zumoff, a Russian immigrant, once a successful playwright, is obsessed with Tolstoy. Particularly with his reasons for killing Anna Karenina. His first draft ended with Anna still alive and well. Four years later, the final version culminated in Anna's death. What happened? Karen turns to Tolstoy's journals for answers, and there discovers a voice that is helping her to deal with the suicide of her lover and the disappointment of her career. Gradually Tolstoy's voice not only becomes real to Karen, it becomes her chosen reality. She believes that she has gone to the 19th century to help the great master rewrite Anna Karenina and to keep its original ending, where Anna lives.