A divorced single parent, Tabitha Mornay lives on an estate on Long Island's North Shore. A promising sculptor, she spends summers in her houseboat - her life sounds reasonable enough. But her beloved - and rebellious - teenage daughter, Tess, has taken up with a dangerous boy friend and moved out of Tabitha's protective range. On the eve of Tabitha's first art show, trouble breaks on all sides: her daughter missing, her studio ransacked, murder, drugs, poison pen letters . . . . The Burning Tower, le Feu de Ciel (the fire from Heaven) is one of the major arcana of the tarot pack. The card is sometimes called The House of God - a medieval term for a hospital. One expert, Case, notes that it traditionally stands for the Tower of Babel, so that the exploding tower signifies the power of utterance. Christian, another expert, calls it the "lightning-struck tower" and takes it to denote ruin, the punishment of pride, the downfall of any spirit that attempts to discover the mysteries of God.