California, 1991. "I only ever talk to this journal. Is there an alternate universe? Another planet? Please could you beam me up, Holy Father?" Paris-born Vivienne Lebrun longs for a different life. One where she doesn't attend college three thousand miles away from her family in New York City. A life where she is sophisticated and has kissed many men, both standing up and sitting down, like the lovers in Rodin's sculpture. In that life, she would skip her final year of school and start writing books and working at a New York bakery. And her French mother wouldn't (possibly, maybe) be dealing with the return of cancer. In her real life, all Vivienne can do is obsessively catalog her longings in her journal. But as a new semester begins, she enrolls in a poetry class taught by Peter Breznik, a handsome Yugoslavian graduate instructor. In a heartbeat, she's taken by his spell-casting blue eyes, his almost-smile, and his romantically-worn canvas satchel. Soon-though Vivienne suspects she's stumbled into a dream-Peter is talking to her in chance library encounters about poems, future plans, and his violently unraveling country. And Vivienne is not just writing her fantasies, but wondering if she might (possibly, maybe) be singled out by the universe to live one. Until struggles intensify for both their families--Vivienne's mother's health, Peter's brother's recklessness in war-torn Croatia--and they are pulled by demands beyond their control.