Sharlie Converse is twenty-six with a vivid and romantic interior life. Born with a heart defect that has defeated an army of specialists, she has lived her short life from moment to moment. Everything that matters most to her – color, excitement, adventure – is forbidden except in her imaginings and in the secret yearningss that she has long accepted will never be made real.
Until, on a cross town bus packed with Christmas shoppers, she falls into Brian Morgan’s arms. And Sharlie, whom love can kill, must make the agonizing choice: to risk her life by loving or never really to live at all.