A Desert of Pure Feeling

From the writer whose voice Carolyn See has characterized as one of the strangest, most distinguished in American fiction writing today ("There is really nothing to compare her with, except, maybe, the austere beauty of a Japanese rock garden"), here is a richly dramatic novel about a woman struggling to make peace with herself as a mother, a lover, an artist, and a friend.

Lucy Patterson has just encountered her past in the person of a man whom she has not seen for twenty-five years. Dr. Ca...