Famine

Two lives are about to cross. Where one ends, the other begins. A police detective discovers the corpse of a young man, dead by starvation, in one of Manhattan's most exclusive neighborhoods. He died apparently not from the lack of means to eat but from the lack of will. A teenaged boy is immersed in an inescapable depression caused by the death of his younger brother. Hospitalized for a crippling fatigue, he seeks salvation in a fellow patient, a beautiful, ghostlike creature whose outward frailty belies her unnatural, obsessive strength. As the detective plunges into the investigation, his life begins to intertwine with the abbreviated life of the victim. Identities blur; names change. The only way to the truth is through an endless string of lies. At every step, an unidentifiable woman and her infant daughter lurk in the shadows, not just watching, but somehow pulling the detective deeper into the mystery.