CIA assassin Daniel Shipley has a comfortable life - a villa in Saigon and a summer house in ancient Hoi An, Vietnam. He's married to a beautiful, intelligent Vietnamese woman and has an 18-year-old daughter who's on her way to Stanford. But when he's assigned to assassinate Thich Minh Chau, a Buddhist monk and activist in Cambodia, he senses there's something deeply wrong with the assignment. The monk is a holy man with tens of thousands of followers and his cause is just in the police state of Cambodia. After the assassination, Shipley's conscience is split open, hurtling him into a state of confusion, remorse and inner chaos. For a year, he retreats to a remote Himalayan monastery to heal himself, leaving his wife and child behind, never suspecting that the assassination will haunt him for the rest of his life.