Something is missing in Ella Rubinstein's life. She has much to be grateful for: a long stable marriage albeit one that has lost its spark; three teenage children who romantic difficulties apart have no major troubles; and a comfortable life in a pleasant home.

But Ella needs a new challenge. Taking a job as a reader to a literary agent her first assignment is to read a novel by a mysterious Scottish author Aziz Z. Zahara.

Plunged back into thirteenth-century Anatolia Ella reads about the fabled poet Rumi whose world view was transformed by the whirling dervish Shams of Tabriz and his forty rules of life and love. Fascinated Ella tracks down Aziz Z. Zahara and begins to correspond with him -and in doing so her world is turned upside down...