Vivian Bearing, Ph.D., a renowned professor of English who has spent years studying and teaching the brilliant and difficult metaphysical sonnets of John Donne, has been diagnosed with terminal ovarian cancer. Her approach to the study of Donne: aggressively probing, intensely rational. But during the course of her illness -- and her stint as a prize patient in an experimental chemotherapy program at a major teaching hospital -- Vivian comes to reassess her life and her work with a profundity and humor that are transformative both for her and the audience.