Marie-Xaviere Volpe-or X, as her friends call her (because her name has too many syllables and because she loves The X-Files)-is a bit of a free spirit, whose "top 10 rules for living" include a melange of spiritual beliefs and a basic distrust of authority. Behind her petite, exotic exterior, X is a liberal-minded, New Age-style philosophy major at the University of Colorado and an outspoken feminist intellectual, who sets tongues wagging at the LDS student ward in Boulder. Some people say she dresses like a belly-dancer or looks like she is on her way to bathe in the sacred stream in Lourdes. (She wears Druidic cloaks, excessive amounts of earrings, and crosses around her neck, which she chooses in various gem stones, believing in the mystic powers associated with amethyst, peridot, or amber). Others disapprove of X's habit of prefacing her weekly gospel doctrine lesson with a vignette about a martyred Catholic saint or a quote from one of her favorite French existentialist writers. X respects the law of chastity not so much because of her belief in its merit as because of her determination not to let the all-male "stake cabal" have any reason to disparage or disempower her. Shortly after a falling out with her non-LDS boyfriend Brannigan Foster, a fellow philosophy major and wealthy, worldly Californian, X meets Luc Gauthiers, a handsome, vegetarian environmentalist and sci-fi fan fresh from his mission in France and Switzerland. Just as her relationship with Luc seems like kismet, X finds herself at a seminar in Martinique with Brannigan, as Luc, his brash roommate Garth, X's best friend Cynthia, and X's family back home in the two-mile-high city of Leadville all wonder just what might be happening on that Caribbean island. Besides Martinique, the story of X and her friends continues from the trendy milieu of Boulder to Leadville, Salt Lake City, Denver, Colorado Springs, Malibu, New York City, and finally to Paris, as X receives a multitude of perspectives and insights from friends and family along the way, and experiences some time-, space- and mind-travel phenomena to visit with some historical French women writers whom she loves and admires, and who give her some invaluable advice for her future."