After travelling in India for 5 months, Michael and Julie meet with a dramatic accident in the revered temple city of Trichy, Tamil Nadu. Their hotel is blacked out and dangerously engulfed by an electrical fire; the only escape, by rope, is through the third story window of their room. Julie plummets to the ground far below. Unconscious, she is hospitalised and found to have many broken bones and a brain trauma, amongst other problems that develop.Yet apart from many difficulties, both Michael and Julie are in wonder at the strangeness, the gifts of understanding, that this event unfolds: the people and medical systems encountered in both countries, the surprising turns of fate, and the mysterious working of the body and the brain itself.