Summary

The novel begins with a dictation from the still-unnamed protagonist and narrator. He was in a small charter plane that crashed into the side of a mountain. His pilot died on impact and the only other passenger was a woman. She broke her leg and had passed out from shock. The pilot’s dog made it out alive too. As he is speaking directly in the text, the protagonist leaves a recorded message for his wife, saying that she had been right all along.

Chapter 1 opens 12 hours before the prelude. Ben Payne, a surgeon, sat in a Utah airport waiting for his flight which had been delayed because of foul winter weather, narrating the story from his point of view but in the past tense. He met a woman named Ashley, a magazine writer, who was engaged to be married. As it turned out...