Alice Hoffman is married with two sons and lives in Massachusetts.
Leaving her husband behind at home in California, March Murray travels east to their old hometown for a funeral and is drawn almost immediately into darkly obsessive unfinished sexual business with old flame Hollis. Meanwhile her wayward daughter and reluctant travelling companion Gwen, finds herself through her perfect love for a vicious old racehorse and struggles with her mother's apparent temporary insanity. Hoffman brilliantly evokes the eeriness of the frosty New England landscape and the sometimes welcome claustrophobia of small-town living as a backdrop to her network of troubled lives afflicted by love. (Kirkus UK)