This novel has no one setting but deliberately takes a cast of five characters, all of whom know each other and whose paths cross and part through the book, always with significant results. The settings change from New York, to Florida, to Italy, to Texas ... The time of the book is the '50's and early '60's, when Americans felt most keenly their post-war position in the world ... The two couples [in the book] are Charles and Irene Waddell, a worldly pair involved with American policy-making in Italy, and Jerry and Catherine Sasser, she being an heiress of a wealthy Texas oil family, and he the outsider to her town from childhood on, but the first, real and final attachment of her life. After the war, Jerry goes into the Washington scene as adviser and 'trouble-shooter' for a Texas senator. The fifth character, involved in turn with both the women, and sometime friend of all (except Jerry Sasser), is a struggling sculptor from the Mississippi coast, Barry Day. He is often, because of his presence, an observer on the scene of lives for whom he feels affection though he cannot live at their level. A successful career is a goal he can never realize. The real interest in the novel was to me in the spiritual states which these various persons embody. Catherine seems the closest to a pure spirit, driven at times almost over the edge of sanity by Jerry, who, from his combat days onward, verges more and more toward the shadows of infidelity, dishonor and darkness. The Waddells are more blatantly dependent on showiness, the vibrance and fashionable motifs of 'interesting people, ' 'a stimulating social life, ' decor, good addresses, possessions and high-profile success. Barry emerges as a person far below the Waddell ideals, but, with Catherine, the spirit of most genuine worth. --www.elizabethspecerwriter.com.