Jimmy Dependra, a writer living on Manhattan's Lower East Side, is obsessed with the mysteries of sex and death as he researches how the city's underground history was transformed by the telegraph and transatlantic cable, the latter invented by Cyrus Field in Gramercy Park. He is introduced to Berenice Chawters, a feisty ninety-three year old former courtesan who has lived there for over sixty years and inherited a large portion of the Atlantic Cable...