Death is easy. It's living that's hard. This is something known to every homeless person, and Taren Gasparini is no different.Childhood is anything but blissful when your mother is a drunk and the town whore. Everything she ever cares about is taken from her, including her baby brother - and her innocence at the hands of her mother's many boyfriends. She becomes an expert on survival, especially after her mother, in a fit of jealous rage, tosses Taren out when she is only thirteen.Hauling herself up from the gutter, she meets the man of her dreams who gives her the only moments of joy she's every known, but when he's killed in his native England, she's alone again and no longer has the will to survive. With her last few dollars, she buys a train ticket to Chicago. There, on the shore of Lake Michigan where she met her lover, she says a final good bye and steps into the murky water.Cordova Perry is a dangerous man in the business world. He takes what he wants and cares little for the damage left in his wake. What he scorns most is weakness, like the weakness he sees in the half-starved woman he fishes from the lake.Still, he has given his word to a dying friend to find Taren and help her. What he finds is a proud, wretched woman with more strength than he realized and suddenly he wants give her a chance at something better. Even after he sets her up with a home, a chance to go to school and finds her brother, he feels he needs to do more. But with a vicious mother and an angry boyfriend out to control Taren and her new-found wealth, can he save her?Can she save him?