Roxy Reid begins life as the abused child of a drug-addict mother. She grows up in a neighborhood terrorized by street gangs. She witnesses the murder of her own child’s father, a married man more than twice her age. But she’s a survivor.

Heavily pregnant, she escapes to New York to give her unborn child a fresh start. She reinvents herself as a successful banker, a dedicated mother, and strives to forget her violent previous life.

Twelve years have passed. She’s built a safe, sheltered arbor of respectability for her daughter and herself. She’s content with her life of frenetic work combined with the trials of single parenting a precocious preteen. But then a chance meeting sets in motion a series of events that threaten to bring down her facade of normalcy.

Roxy tries desperately to keep her life on its metronomic routine and preserve appearances. But in a roller-coaster holiday season between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, the genie of her past is well and truly released from the bottle. To confront it, she will have to use all the vicious life skills of her youth. But will this cause her to lose the one thing she cherishes, above all else, the love of her daughter?