Raymond Kennedy has been hailed as "a novelist of . . . diabolical artistry" (Chicago Tribune), a "master storyteller" (Raymond Carver), and "truly . . . one of this country's finest writers"
(Boston Globe). He is, wrote the New York Times critic Anatole Broyard, "the kind of novelist who gets high praise in sophisticated places." In his first new novel in almost a decade, Kennedy
offers a lyrical tale of a young woman's awakening.
Raised in cosmopolitan Fall River, Masschusetts, twenty-year-old Eleanor Gray arrives in East Becket, in the Berkshire hills, to become the town's new schoolteacher. Intelligent and
quick-witted, she is welcomed as a shining addition to this isolated community. Almost as soon as she arrives, she becomes aware of a local young woman named Evangeline Sewell.
Independent, imperious, almost antisocial, Evangeline is also mysteriously charismatic. A native of the dying "upcountry" village of Wisdom Way, she has been living as a ward of the town. Now,
however, she has withdrawn abruptly from school and soon retreats to her native village. Intuiting that the girl has "gotten in trouble," Eleanor initiaties a correspondence, ostensibly to
offer assistance but also to satisfy her own desire to establish contact. As Eleanor slowly yields to a growing infatuation with Evangeline, she finds herself torn between her commitment to her
community and her loyalty to this headstrong young woman.
