Dr. Nicholas Steiner is a Park Avenue internist in his mid-forties. He has a successful medical practice, a stable marriage with a home in the suburbs and enjoys good health. But when he develops melanoma, a potentially fatal type of cancer, everything changes. With a worsening prognosis his marriage dissolves and he is unable to work. As time runs out, the combined efforts of two unlikely individuals an expert in Chinese herbs and a highly unusual younger woman play critical roles in his survival. Many of the narrative's turbulent and surprising developments are unforeseen consequences of decisions and events from earlier in life. The author concludes that the cancer that almost killed him "was the best thing that could have happened to me."