"Joshua Seigl, a celebrated but reclusive author, is forced for reasons of failing health to surrender his much-prized bachelor's independence. Advertising for an assistant, he unwittingly embarks upon the most dangerous adventure of his privileged life." "Alma Busch, a sensuous, physically attractive young woman with bizarre tattoos covering much of her body, stirs in Speigl a complex of emotions: pity? desire? responsibility? guilt? Unaware of her...

Anny Butler is a caretaker, a nurturer, first for her own brothers and sisters, and then as a director of an agency devoted to the welfare of children. What she has never had is a real family. That changes when she meets and marries Lewis Aiken, an exuberant surgeon fifteen years older than Anny. When they marry, she finds her family -- not a traditional one, but a group of Charleston childhood friends who are inseparable, who are one another's surrogate...

"In those days in the early Sixties we were not women yet but girls.This was, without irony, perceived as our advantage." So begins I'll Take You There, an astonishingly intimate and unsparing self-portrait of a nameless young student who, though, gifted with a penetrating intelligence, is drastically inclined to obsession. Funny, mordant, and compulsive, "Anellia" (as she sometimes calls herself) falls passionately in love with a brilliant yet elusive...