In Rhoda Lerman's novel Animal Acts, Linda Morris is a wealthy Long Island woman who is dissatisfied with her 25-year marriage to Steven and unhappy after an affair with a dangerous man named John Banks. She muses: "My nature held itself from me as the moon held itself whole over distant hills and tantalized me with its pieces. It was most what I wanted to complete, the puzzle of myself."
Deciding to head out on her own, Linda takes a van from the garage and discovers a gorilla inside which her husband has rented for an amusement park horror house. When Linda tries to return it, the anxious animal kills his keeper and becomes a fugitive along with Linda. She is not surprised to learn his name is Moses.
On the road, Linda communicates and even communes with Moses. She crosses the bridge from intellect to instinct and opens herself up to new possibilities. At one point, Linda realizes that she has entered gorilla time where silence reveals its secrets.
Meanwhile, this vagabond listens to the voices in her head of both her husband and her lover. She speaks back to them with a defense of her relationship with Moses.
Novelist Rhoda Lerman in Animal Acts probes the barriers which keep men and women from true intimacy. She hurrahs Linda's romantic yearning to return to the Garden of Eden where wholes, not just parts, are sought, and the subtleties of the heart hold sway. Best of all, Lerman affirms interspecies communication and the precious ties between animals and humans.