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The time of this novel (1960’s
through to the closing days of the Vietnam
War) makes a frame for the various lives that
are caught up in the period. Mary Kerr Harbison
is a promising young ballet student in a North
Carolina city. She meets and falls in love with
Jefferson Blaise from Louisiana, a young activist
who has come to N.C., following a charismatic
professor he studied with at Georgetown.
Their romance and marriage is complicated
by Jeff leaving the U.S. for Canada, subsequently
spending long periods away as a fugitive.
Mary Kerr is subject to hostility from a psychotic
mother, the bete noire of her life, and tries to
make a life for herself and her child in Montreal.
Jeff and Mary’s story is one of meetings and
partings, many times repeated in varying locales,
a romantic plot based in the real divisiveness
of the times. Anyone familiar with the Italian
classic, I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed),
will recognize another version of adventures
involving love, separation, and reunion.
The novel will be issued this year (2002)
by Louisiana State University
Press.
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