The cool, beautiful Constance Schuyler lives alone in Manhattan in the early
1960s. At a literary party, she meets Sidney Klein, a professor of poetry twenty
years her senior. Sidney is a single father with a poor marital record, and he
pursues Constance with relentless determination. Eventually she surrenders,
accepts his marriage proposal, and moves, with some dread, into his dark,
book-filled apartment.She can't settle in. She's tortured by memories of the
bitterly unhappy childhood she spent with her father in a dilapidated house
upstate. When she learns devastating new information about that past,
Constance's fragile psyche suffers a profound shock. Her marriage, already
tottering, threatens to collapse