Dominique Stein is beautiful, young, and Jewish. Her sanity is overly dependent on external cues, chameleon-like. She awakens every morning at 5:59:59. She weighs in at exactly 111, her snug palindrome. These are her "friends". They keep her safe. Then, it all explodes. She desperately searches to find her way back inside that cozy bubble of sanity she had constructed.

Lost, her bearings off and wobbly, her instincts are not functioning. Horrific crimes are committed; not everyone survives. Found not guilty by virtue of temporary insanity, she is sent to a psychiatric prison for women. There she is caught between the kind, serene Freudian analyst, Dr. Haddad, and the head of the institute, the manic, megalomaniacal Dr. du Chevre, who offers her the Faustian contract; be the subject for his secretive, odd research, and he will get her out of prison earlier. Dominique has to navigate her way out of this maze of institutional insanity.