A college professor reluctantly hides an escaped female convict who tries to get him to help prove her innocent of a murder.

After a sexual harassment incident, Dennis Burke, a Nathaniel Hawthorne scholar, goes to work at a California college. He begins correspondence with an imprisoned murderer, Lydia Davis. Burke is finding old habits hard to break, developing relationships with obsessive coeds. Meanwhile, Lydia escapes from prison. Dennis and his colleague Thurston, a computer scientist and hacker, find themselves caught in a web of intrigue.—Ken Miller <[email protected]>