A pre-internet Second Life, the business of Chance Company is to offer clients a vacation from their own lives in other, fabricated lives. In this labyrinth of identities, real or assumed, Agnes Darshel searches for her errant father, a search that involves her in the internal conflicts of Chance Company's creation myth and history. Against a dark, atmospheric background of Europe, the USA, South America and North Africa, themes of exile, real and self-imposed, and the consequences of being on the losing side politically are played out in a shifting underworld where mysteries and crime are never far from the surface.