Left with no memory of who she is, Wendy Doe arrives at the Meadowlark Institute of Memory Research, where she falls under the control of a doctor and his ambitious student, while the daughter she left behind tries to make sense of it all. 'Wendy Doe' was found on a bus to Philadelphia with no money, no ID, and no memory of who she is, where she was going, or what she might have done. She is diagnosed with dissociative fugue, a temporary amnesia that could lift at any moment-- or never at all. Dr. Benjamin Strauss invites her to submit herself for experimental observation at his Meadowlark Institute for Memory Research. To Strauss's ambitious student, Lizzie Epstein, Wendy is an object of fascination, and an invitation to wonder: once a woman is untethered from all past and present obligations of womanhood, who is she allowed to become?