The Time Being

From Mary Meigs, the celebrated author of In the Company of Strangers, comes an autobiographical novel, The Time Being. An affair born of a correspondence with a distant admirer leads the lovers to an arranged meeting in Australia. With a lifetime of relationships already behind them, the two women approach each other cautiously, each filled with the rekindled fire of innocent passion, constrained by their gathered clouds of experience. In this isolated and primeval land, a performance of ancient aboriginal ritual and drama draws the lovers into the elemental world of "the dream time," the still point around which their relationship begins to turn. This is an exquisite love story unlike any other, written in retrospect with a lovely, clear heart, and in the full light of day.