**A lyric novel about the play of grief, empathy, new and old love, and
the quest to overcome blindness in human relations.
**
Caught in the cross-currents of a fraught divorce and a new love, the
death of her mother, and a global pandemic, a writer plunges into an
obsession with the work of 1960s French philosopher Roland Barthes. Her
struggles to make sense of his work and life--and of what can happen to
a woman's settled life in a single harrowing year--result in an
engrossing, funny, earthy, and innovative lyric work. The quest for
authenticity in motherhood, sexuality, and tenancy on the earth and in
the home, as well as the unusual lyric form, make the novel unified in
spirit yet transdisciplinary in approach.