Claire and Dorotea are best friends and beautiful women. Their affable rivalry turns serious in a game that has been played out over two hundred thousand years. It's a competition that has shaped the very course of human culture, and created a penis of a size disproportionate to its function. Claire is well educated and highly intelligent. She knows what she wants and how to get it. She lectures in anthropology. Studying for her PhD, her thesis is The Role of the Clitoris in the Evolution of Love. She quotes Shakespeare and feminist interpretations of Darwinian theory. Dorotea is an independent, professional photographer. Although she studied the same things with Claire in high school, she's now an artist, not a scientist and she has two things that Claire wants. One is a photo album, the existence of which she only accidentally reveals to Claire. It is locked and hidden in a darkroom. No one else has ever seen it. Inside are photos like no other. The second is something Dorotea will take to the other side of the planet to avoid losing. But when she gets there, the same forces that drive Claire will nearly kill her and make her lose what she's found ... until someone special intervenes.