In the not too distant future Dianna Harrison, a high priced corporate financial consultant, a daughter of old money, has everything she wants, a loving husband, two sons at Sandhurst-on-Sound, an exclusive military school, and an old Victorian estate in the village of Old Claremont on Long Island's North Shore. She is a long-legged beauty with the figure of a lingerie or swimsuit model, and a dark olive complexion. What she doesn't have is a mane of long, flowing ebony locks. Instead she has a cock's comb of black unmanageable frizz, which can neither be straightened nor permed. She would try anything to have a cascade of blue-black anthracite crashing over her shoulders and pouring down her back, including selling her soul. Set in a time where the control a woman has over her body has been scientifically advanced, extended, and firmly protected by law, Dianna may finally have found the final solution to her self-esteem problem. She finds it in a simple cream rinse. She is happy with it until she hears about a process called "The Tantalus System." Two stumbling blocks stand in her way, Jo-lee, her hairdresser, and Alison Coney, her slightly twisted friend.