Anna Parrish and Ruby Smith have been intimate friends from childhood. Anna is blonde, coolly interrogative, more traditionally beautiful and, in subtle senses, dominant. Ruby is darkhaired, more impulsive, less classically attractive and, in small but important ways, allows Anna to lead. Now young women, they plan a rendezvous at an artists workshop in the country in central France. In the charged world as the sixties turn into the seventies, their lives are full of sensual imagining, the desire for freedom and questing ardour for what they havent yet discovered. Having visited some friends briefly, Ruby heads to their meetingplace, only to discover that Anna has never arrived, and that the workshops are next to useless. Acting on surmise and rumour she follows the trail that she thinks Anna will have taken, to the south and the marshy wilds of the Camargue. There she meets Caleb Caley Hanson, an American poet, friend of Rubys friends, and Annas happenstance lover for a single night. He is also looking for Anna, trying to understand why she left so suddenly. He and Ruby find some solace together, and perhaps the beginnings of something more, enveloped in the burning heat, pungent smells and rich tastes of a southern summer. But Anna isnt there. Where has she gone? Is there something sinister underneath her absence? Or is she simply following her own lead as usual? Ruby and Caley set off north again to try to find out, and drive headlong into a totally unexpected situation... | Rosalind Brackenbury A Virtual Image Paperback Book