Americans Alexandra Davis and Julie Mitchell are fighting on opposite sides of "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland.
Alex is an assassin for the Provisional Irish Republican Army, eliminating traitors to the cause. Recruited off the Princeton campus, her work for the IRA is a means for her to exact revenge on the British government and others - payback for past traumas. After over a decade in the Provisionals, Alex joins a violent new offshoot of the organization in the late '90s - the Genuine IRA. But she's soon disillusioned and begins secretly working against the group, endangering her life. Now under suspicion by leaders of the Genuine IRA and also targeted by government anti-terrorist forces, Alex needs a safe exit from her past.
Rebuilding her life after devastating personal tragedies, Julie is a CIA analyst on a taskforce hunting terrorists in Europe. Shocked, she suspects her once-closest friend Alex is a member of the Genuine IRA. But that couldn't be possible, could it? Alex had cut Julie out of her life over a decade prior and subsequently died in an accident. Events will ultimately reunite Alex and Julie in violent, dangerous circumstances.
Set across the US, Europe, Britain and Northern Ireland in the 1980s and '90s, Sculpting the Mists takes Alex and Julie into worlds of moral ambiguity, espionage, terrorism, collateral damage and betrayal. It's also a novel of personal struggle, redemption, friendship and the powerful forces of the past.