Lyssa Dent Hughes is a privileged, well-educated daughter of a Republican senator and fifth-generation granddaughter of Ulysses S. Grant, wife of a professor, owner of a pleasant Georgetown home. She is also the president's nominee for surgeon general. Then members of the media discover that once, in the past, she failed to respond to a call for jury duty. A relatively minor misstep - were it not for a good friend who uses the incident to make a point, scarcely thinking of the consequences.

From that moment on, Lyssa Dent Hughes sits helplessly by while the press investigates her family and friends, shattering her privacy, her career, and her world.