A picture, they say, is worth a thousand word. But Joanna Holbrook-Sutherland senses that a photograph of a homeless woman she sees at an exhibit in a trendy London gallery can change her life--if only she can locate the woman, whose haunting face has been also haunting her dreams. With a compulsiveness that amazes her family and friends and frightens herself, Jo assembles the crumbs of information that leads her to a frigid park in Whitechapel and to Rocky, a young woman with fearful secrets. But the hardest part is still ahead, as Jo deals with Rocky's debilitating physical and mental consequences of living on the street for five years and with the horrors that drove Rocky there in the first place.