Sandra Scofield
Author of Novels & a Memoir

During the tumultuous summer of 1968, Abilene Painter, a passive young woman, becomes embroiled in a series of student demonstrations and riots that inevitably culminate in tragedy and redemption. Set against a cultural backdrop of machismo and violence, Abby's initial acquiescene stands out in dramatic relief. A complex character analysis within an explosive historical context." -Booklist

"Succeeds in creating a richly sensory portrait of a world in exile--not only in a foreign land but within one woman's own skin." New York Times Book Review

OPENING PAGE:
Tonio said, "Remember I was going to show you some pictures?" They had been playing gin rummy. Abilene was putting away the cards. Tonio took an envelope out of his dresser and brought it over to the bed.
Out spilled photographs of something like a cave. A great black eye.
"It's the Swallow Pit. You remember we talked about it when the Swiss archeologist was here. I wanted him to go down with me, but he said he didn't have time. See? There's the cliff on the far side."
She could tell he was excited. She leaned closer to see the picture better. She thought the blackness wwas like a great heart.
"Isn't it something to respect?" Tonio said. "A quarter of a mile deep."
She looked blankly at his pleasure, his excitement over a hole in the earth.
"That's like the Empire State Building upside down! And once you are down there, they say there are thousands of feet more of caves, and the open space is much greater than the mouth. You could see for yourself."
She blinked. "I could see!"
"Sure," he said, gathering up his pictures. WHen he found something new to explore, or own, he looked younger, with a boy's elation. He came out of the ring like that, after a kill, though in the ring he showed only his courage, and his respect for the bull.
"If you were brave," he said, "We could go down by rope and see it for ourselves. We could go in the fall, after the rains. But I must think how to train you! Maybe with weights." He reached over and squeezed her bicep. "You wouldn't want to dangle on these."
She was a skinny girl, with big feet for ballast. Her face and hands and arms looked washed with diluted freckles. There was a fragile quality about her, and, under that, a stringy hardness. Now he spanned her wrist with his thumb and finger. She couldn't have pulled away easily.
He loved to joke She thought he might mean to tease her, with talk about a pit of swallows. "Do people fall in?" she asked.
He laughed. "I don't think so. Who would be so stupid? And those Indians up there, they're much more likely to hound someone until he jumps in on his own."
There was a bubble of fear in her throat. It was not such a terrible feeling. "I would like to see," she said. "I would like, ta least, to look down. I would, if I didn't have to stand too close."