What would you do if you had made a mess of your life and suddenly got a chance to start over again? By an ironic twist of fate, Frank Oliviero, an unfaithful husband and shady jewel dealer, isn't in his office, where he was supposed to be, in the World Trade Center when the Twin Towers are destroyed. Impulsively, rather than face a messy divorce and financial and legal complications, he decides to remain officially dead and start his life over again from zero. Still grieving for the thousands of victims of the disaster from which he was unaccountably spared, he now has to cope with the consequences of his presumed demise: separation from his daughters, his parents, and his siblings, and the challenge of becoming a better man in a new country. He presents his life story in a document addressed to someone whose identity gradually becomes clear as the novel unfolds.