Jacob Finch Bonner had a best-selling novel but hasn’t been able to follow it up with another great success, so he’s now teaching at a low-rate MFA program where he’s bored and uninspired. That is, until he meets Evan Parker, who shares a plot so delicious that Jake can’t get it out of his head. When he learns that Evan Parker has died, and never published the story, Jake takes matters into his own hands and writes the book, which becomes an immediate best seller. But then the email arrives threatening to expose Jake for the fraud he is and Jake becomes obsessed with finding out if this fictional plot was based on real-life events.