Smart, savvy and original, Sally Emerson’s story about a young woman growing up with an amoral mother deftly portrays youth and its careful obsessions. For fifteen-year-old Jennifer Hamilton, the transition from adolescence to adulthood is painful and bewildering. Too mature to return to the securities of childhood, yet unwilling to join a world of adults, Jennifer creates a psychic world in which her companions are Shelley and the Restoration playwright Aphra Behn. Adding to Jennifer’s self-doubt is her exuberant and capricious mother. When her mother brings home the young, attractive architect Paul, Jennifer becomes aware of new and unusual feelings, and before long mother and daughter are competing for Paul’s attention.