In this book, Kim Chernin writes about an adventure in passion and intimacy that transformed her. Living with her husband in Berkeley after their daughter has gone away to college, the author realizes, "It was time to care more for my own desires than for any other obligations. My time had come to take on the world like a boy." Chernin falls in love with Hadamar, a beautiful, accomplished, and charismatic woman. She becomes aggressive, confident, and obsessive in her pursuit of this person. But Hadamar is frightened by the ardor of Chernin's love and by the danger of giving in to her own desires. At one point, the author notes, "Perhaps I had found in Hadamar the lost, despairing woman who needed to be saved, so that I could free myself from being that woman." In the end, even the bold boy in Chernin is taken aback by a mysterious turn of events in her relationship with Hadamar.

Similar to her last book, In My Father's Garden, this one contains many luminous passages which shed light on the human soul. Kim Chernin is a poetic explorer of the force field of desire, the ardent yearning that lies behind our passionate quest for love.