Following the gruesome murder of a young woman in her neighborhood, a self-determined woman living in New York City--as if to test the limits of her own safety--propels herself into an impossibly risky sexual liaison. Soon she grows increasingly wary about the motives of every man with whom she has contact--and about her own.

A hate crime on the campus of a New England college puts the school's dean (Parker) in a position where she has to examine her own feelings about race and prejudice, while maintaining her administration's politically correct policies.