In this classic storyof small-town life, two schoolteachers are drawn to each other by their concernfor a lonely young schoolgirl.
But rumour and malice mount against the three, sweeping theminto isolation and, ultimately, disaster.
As long as Vinny Lalor could remember she had been on thefringe of things. Family and school both found her their least importantmember. They circled giddily without needing her. She was afraid, as she clungto the spinning edges of her world, that one day she would be flung unwantedand violently into space.
Even the new season did not burst over her in a greenflurry. Buds flocked along the adolescent trees, but she came, after herfourteenth winter, unmoved by the spring into the first week of the last term.