Marlboro Country.  Stray Country.  Two countries that share a common border.  Spend enough time in one, and you're likely to find the other.  One exists in the semi-gloss pages of 1950s American magazines, a country once stumbled upon by accident, waiting in a dentist office or driving past a billboard at the side of a freeway.  The other is similarly a country entered by pure chance. 

Both may kill you.

Mary Brogan, former citizen of Marlboro Country, expatriated.  Current status - refugee.  Location - somewhere in Stray Country. 

There is a nightmare endemic to the soil of both countries.  A nightmare by the name of nicotine.  It is the same nightmare as prison bars, leg irons, and state penitentiaries.  The kind of nightmare ghosts basted themselves in night sweats over.

Mary Brogan.  Died trying to light her cigarette.  A woman who spent her life working on a single, solitary puzzle.  Morning.  Noon.  Night.  Kitchen.  Living Room.  In front of the television.  An enigma unraveled thread by thread.  Year by year.  A single-gram puzzle made out of tobacco, tar, filter, and paper that a woman needs to solve no matter how dead she is.

No moral, no message, no prophetic tract, just a simple statement of fact

Mary Brogan's not gone.  She's just crossed borders.  And she wants her cigarette.