When I was twelve, a fortune teller told me that my one true love would die young and leave me all alone. Everyone said she was a fraud, that she was just making it up. I'd really like to know why the hell a person would make up a thing like that. Wry yet vulnerable, Beatrice Jordan isn't the sort of woman who usually answers personal ads but she is unable to resist the following: 'If your intentions are pure, I am seeking a friend for the end of the world.' In doing so, she meets Jacob Grace, a charming, effervescent thirty-something writer, a free spirit who is a passionate seeker of life. He possesses his own turn of phrase and ways of thinking and feeling that dissonantly harmonise with Beatrice's off-centre vision as they roller coaster through the joys and furies of their heart-wrenching romance. Along the way they try to come to terms with the hurt brought about by their distant fathers who, in different ways, forsook them.