A masterpiece from one of the great contemporary American writers.

‘One night when she was four and sleeping in the bottom bunk of her bunk bed, Ruth Cole awoke to the sound of lovemaking - it was coming from her parents’ bedroom.‘

This is the story of Ruth Cole. It is told in three parts- on Long Island, in the summer of 1958, when she is only four; in 1990, when she is an unmarried woman whose personal life is not nearly as successful as her literary career; and in the autumn of 1995, when Ruth Cole is a forty-one-year-old widow and mother. She’s also about to fall in love for the first time…