"I write this sitting at the kitchen sink" is the first line of a novel
about love, sibling rivalry, and a bohemian existence in a crumbling
castle in the middle of nowhere. Cassandra Mortmin's journal records her
fadingly glamorous stepmother, her beautiful, wistful older sister, and
the man to whom they owe both their isolation and poverty: Father. The
author of one experimental novel, and a minor cause celebre, he has
since suffered from writer's block and is determined to drag his family
down with him. But if the iron has entered Father's soul, it hasn't
penetrated Cassandra's.