Sara is a lovely widow. When her non-Jewish husband of 25 years died of cancer, she found her new single life baffling and began to search for a path back to the Judaism of her childhood. Her search brought her into contact with Rabbi Baraq Broulliette, whose own difficult times had left him alone in a world of university teaching and scholarship, Jewish worship, and the tutoring of bar and bat mitzvah candidates. Throughout a year of counselling, the rabbi and the widow become fast friends, and each discovers that the other is playing an important role in the healing that is necessary following their grief, illness, and loss of cherished loved ones.

But counsellors do not become romantically involved with their patients, and patients must guard against the costly mistake of "transference," imagining that the professional who listens and understands their problems is the person whom they should love.

How can the rabbi and the widow handle the delicate and mystifying effects of their mutual trust in each other? Can the grizzled rabbi and the lovely widow remain friends? Or will their relationship be a temporary detour on the road back to wholeness and perhaps new romantic possibilities? The story takes a surprising twist as it winds towards a conclusion that neither one could have foreseen.