Set in 1970, when thirty years old, Ruth Levin leaves NYC to be close to her brilliant husband who has been checked into a mental hospital, in a "no-where town", as she says. It is when the US was pouring troops into Cambodia. She ends up renting a shabby house in a little town, imagining when her husband will join her eventually. However, she moved next door to anti-war activists and the neighbor, Laura, tries to reform everyone that crosses her path. Since Ruth is lonely and isolated, they become friends and Ruth will never be the same! At the heart of this wonderful book are these two women and how they change themselves and change each other! The intimacy of these two women, their vulnerability and struggles with and beyond each other, bears witness against indifference and apathy. This is a novel of how people affect each other and are affected themselves by the world (events), birth, separations, sex, drugs, rock & roll, etc. A touching testimony to lives expanding outward, written in a warm style.