Ocean State Libraries

Eating herself into obesity in the wake of her lost childhood and over-anxious mother, Dolores Price finds herself facing adulthood in a cruel world and resolves to rise to the occasion.

Seven years ago, Penny's boyfriend was savagely attacked by a bear, setting off a chain of tragic events. Now, fighting a debilitating illness and haunted by her past, she finds herself incapable of emotional or sexual intimacy. As a way to break down the defenses she has built up in her safe Chicago life, she sets out on a cross-country bike tour. On this trip she meets Ndele, a beautiful, mysterious black man who challenges her to confront her ghosts...

A woman attempts to recover from a failed love affair by writing a novel on the subject and finds it a difficult task. The hardest part is the chronology, who did what to whom first. She describes the affair in narrative form, without dialogue, from its happy beginnings--he was good looking, a poet, 12 years her junior--to the sordid finale when she turned to stalking him. By the author of Break It Down.