From the Dustjacket--
Rhine Maidens is a beautifully written
novel about an emotional legacy passed from parent to child, a
failure of love that both divides and unites women of two generations.
At twenty, Grace had a 20-inch waist, long auburn
hair, a job in downtown Los Angeles, and all the world before
her. She married a man she loved and was supposed to live happily
ever after. But her husband left her for another woman. Now in
her sixties, she lives alone in a small California town and lies
awake at night listening to the sound of the oil wells, counting
her disappointments and waiting for something else to go wrong.
Garnet is one of Grace's disappoints and has
spent much of her life trying to please - or at least pacify -
her mother. She's a mother now herself, with a successful husband
and a nice home in Brentwood. She shops at I. Magnin, gardens
and plays bridge, takes courses at UCLA. She's happy. What happened
to her mother could never happen to her. And then it does happen.
Rhine Maidens is the story of two women
caught in a sexual history that passes from one generation to
the next. Carolyn See captures with rare intimacy and insight
the frustrations - and triumphs - of women struggling with the
loss of love, and observes with an affectionate yet unflinching
eye the casual Southern California life, past and present, of
which they are part.
