"Miss Ross's unexpected reporting from home buries once and for all the mild, prudish, eccentrically mannered 'Mr. Shawn' of legend and ridicule, restoring to life a Bill Shawn who is far more complex, romantic, earthy, masculine, and human. He lives in these pages as he has nowhere before." David Michaelis, New York Observer

In Here But Not Here, Lillian Ross, a renowned journalist, tells the remarkable story of the life she shared for forty years with William Shawn, legendary editor of The New Yorker.

"An enduring love between two people, however startling or unconventional, feels unalterable, predestined, compelling, and intrinsically normal to the couple immersed in it," Ross says, "so I would have to say that I had an intrinsically normal life for over four decades with William Shawn. I have a lasting sense of the normalcy of it all. It was a normalcy that Bill Shawn was able to create for himself and for me against all normal odds."

William Shawn was married, yet he and Ross created a home together a dozen blocks south of the Shawns' apartment, raised a child, and lived discretely. Their lives intertwined from the 1950's until Shawn's death, in 1992. Ross describes how they met and the intense connection between them; how Shawn worked with the best writers of the period; how, to escape their developing liaison, Ross moved to Hollywood-only to return to New York and their relationship. The book is a gem, an exquisitely told real-life story more potent than fiction.