Historia formada por una trama de pasiones obsesivas y egoÃstas, Russell Banks describe sin asomo de piedad a sus protagonistas, amorales y narcisistas, representantes de la alta sociedad neoyorquina rica, culta y refinada, capaz de ser cómplice de la abyección con tal de conservar y hacer valer sus privilegios. Banks mueve a sus personajes en una amplia geografÃa: Estados Unidos, Francfort, el sur de Francia y España, en un perÃodo que abarca los años 1936 y 1937, correspondientes a la guerra civil española y al surgimiento del nazismo en Alemania. / Twenty-nine-year-old Vanessa Cole is a wild, stunningly beautiful heiress, the adopted only child of a highly regarded New York brain surgeon and his socialite wife. Twice married, Vanessa has been scandalously linked to any number of rich and famous men. But on the night of July 4, 1936, at her parents' country home in a remote Adirondack Mountain enclave known as The Reserve, two events coincide to permanently alter the course of Vanessa's callow life: her father dies suddenly of a heart attack, and a mysteriously seductive local artist, Jordan Groves, blithely lands his Waco biplane in the pristine waters of the forbidden Upper Lake.