Nerissa, a small-town prodigy who made it to a top college, believed she had married her Prince Charming, Gideon. Her dream swiftly curdled into a gilded nightmare: her child taken by her mother-in-law, her husband a serial cheater. The final blow came when she was pushed down the stairs, costing her their third child, and her own mother succumbed due to poverty, denied medical care. Forced awake, Nerissa divorced. Now, years later, Gideon is eaten by regret. But Nerissa has long since risen from the ashes, that naive fairy tale forever buried in her past.