They"re the golden couple of Santa Fe. With his vast wealth, Molloy has launched an innovative foundation. His new wife, Judith Greenwood, is an internationally known scientist, who works at the famous think-tank, the Santa Fe Institute, pursuing the sciences of complexity. They"ve found each other late in life, and their love story is the envy of everyone in town. Santa Feans yearn to be invited to the famous long table Molloy and his wife host every Sunday night, or to their monthly salon, for the best talk, the best food, and the best wine. Sure to be at these evenings are some of the couple"s closest friends, the "starchitect" Leandro Torres, known worldwide for his prize-winning buildings; the influential gallery owner, Nola Holliman; and the beautiful trilingual legal translator, Lucie Marchmont. Yet each of these enviable men and women conceals a tragic personal story. When 9/11 occurs in faraway New York City, these privileged Santa Feans are deeply affected, and must struggle to keep their secrets hidden. An intergenerational struggle erupts, where fathers and sons, and even grandfathers, intrude on each other"s lives. As everyone negotiates the catastrophic autumn of 2001, two deaths, plus a nearly fatal car accident, intensify already raw emotions. Though each of these friends suffers deeply, and seeks consolation in very different ways, it is above all Molloy and his wife, the golden couple, who are forced to confront the cruelest meanings of the poem they"ve loved and read together, Paradise Lost.