Dr. Sheila O'Neill is a young English Lit professor at a mediocre college, ostracized for her unfashionably right-wing views and crude jokes. Lacking allies in the workplace, she vents to an online friend Jake, a reclusive autopsy technician who shares her cynical worldview. A sinister bond forms out of their virtual banter.

With Jake's encouragement, Sheila starts writing a historical novel about a disfigured Anglo-Irish noblewoman trying to survive in 17th-century Paris amidst religious paranoia. The novel is intended to boost Sheila's career and set her apart from her vindictive colleagues. Plunging into the world of her suffering heroine, Sheila becomes enchanted by the idea of victimhood and the hidden perks that come with it. As lines between fiction and reality blur, she discovers that deformity can take you farther than conventional beauty.

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