Driving home at dusk, Claire Andrews, an art history professor at a prestigious New England university, accidentally strikes and kills a boy. Though immediately cleared of blame, she is nonetheless left psychologically devastated and haunted by the accident's consequences. Meanwhile Claire wrestles with her study of Vincent van Gogh's Crows over the Wheatfield and the painting's mysterious relationship to its creator's untimely death. As worrisome parallels between the suicidal artist's life and her own begin to emerge, she'll have to reconcile herself to her past to become whole again . . . or surrender to the darkness that is enveloping her.