This technically polished novel ingeniously combines elements from traditional quests, fables, and novels. A seemingly rhetorical question is posed in chapter 1: Why did sociable, smart Dora Henry marry cold, controlling Jared Gerber? But that question is the key to the book and to the parallel stories told by Sheri Tepper. The sets of characters unravel their separate puzzles until all become different aspects of the same web of events, shaking the reader's, and Dora's, perceptions to the core. Tepper's linguistic sleight-of-hand with metaphor and image is breathtaking; her storytelling is deft and funny; her characters are memorable and sympathetic. Topical, mythical, archetypal, and provocative, this is a book no fantasy or science fiction reader should miss.