Jim Dougherty lives the kind of unsatisfied life familiar to many a middle-aged millennial. He's stuck in a dead-end job at a tired old casino, haunted by regrets of unfulfilled childhood potential and going nowhere-slow. Every day it seems the life he was meant to live becomes a little further out of reach. But when the oddly familiar stranger appears at his pre-dawn blackjack table with a new perspective on a mystery he thought he'd buried back in boarding school, Jim learns that self-improvement can be dangerous. For Jim Dougherty, the road not taken turns out to be a deadly one. This unique blend of noir, sci-fi and psychological allegory is sure to keep readers guessing until the final desert sunrise.