In a fit of childish anger, a little girl wishes never to see her mother again. Hours later, she learns her mother was killed on an icy road. The girl grows into a woman, fascinated by death, frightened by the power of a simple wish, apathetic about life and love when the inevitable result is loss.

After moving to Florida to be near her one living relative, her brother Ned, she's struck by lightning (after wishing it so). Now the coldness she has always felt takes on a physical form. She's not burnt, but frozen -- her heart a lump of ice, colorblind, a mass of tics and physiological oddities, withdrawing farther into herself. Then she hears of Lazarus Jones, a fellow lightning victim, who came back from the dead after his experience. Hoping he can tell her more about death, she seeks him out -- only to find that he makes her feel more alive than she has for years. His touch is like fire, literally and figuratively, burning her skin and soul. Does she dare wish for a happily ever after of her own, like those of the fairy tales she loved as a child, or is the ice inside her too solid to ever be melted?

This is a haunting story about how one event in a life can alter its course -- the very embodiment of "Be careful what you wish for." Written in first-person, the narrative draws us in to a lonely, frozen place with only occasional cracks in the ice to provide hope for a thaw. Alice Hoffman creates a dark fairy tale that's lyrical and fascinating, about how the fear of living can sometimes be more paralyzing than the fear of death, and that sometimes the princess must rescue herself from the spell.