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Valerie Martin’s third novel is the story of a deadly love triangle set in New Orleans. Emma Miller, married and the mother of a five-year-old daughter, is obsessed by her increasingly sadomasochistic relationship with Pascal Toussaint, who is himself fixated upon Claire D’Anjou, a young novice with a passion for God so powerful that she has been sent home to New Orleans by the convent for a year’s test of her vocation.
In a city overrun by rats and awash in a mysterious plague, freedom and the consuming desire for self-sacrifice are pursued to harrowing, ultimately redemptive consequence. New Orleans—alluring, pleasure-loving, mesmerizing—remains both a force in its own right and a backdrop to the erotic contests at the center of the novel that established Martin as a major American voice.
Born in Missouri and raised in New Orleans, Valerie Martin currently resides in upstate New York. She is the author of six novels, two story collections, and a biography of St. Francis.
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