In this haunting and sensual story, the violent death of a psychiatrist sends his wife on a journey into her hidden self.

Jill Bowman, a historian teaching at a university in the Boston area, is engaged in research on the London Plague of 1665. Her life has long been bounded by academic obligations, responsibility for her autistic daughter, and life with her husband, Peter Freytag. As Breathless opens, Peter is discovered dead in a seedy hotel room.

But the real intricacies of the story that unfolds are those of Jill herself and her struggles with Peter's sudden death, the secrets it reveals, and the shadowy parts of her own life.

Memories surface as she examines her troubled relationships with her mother and sister. She remembers the time thirty years earlier when, after the murder of a neighbor, she lost the power of speech; she reflects on the college affair that led to an abortion; she relives the failure of her first marriage; and most of all she recalls the exhilarating, ambiguous moments from her life with Peter.

Although Breathless gives the reader an exceptionally intimate and comprehensive view of this forty-two-year-old woman's life, it also becomes the story of her relationship with the detective in charge of the case, David Resnick.