is obsessed by her increasingly sadomasochistic relationship with Pascal Toussaint, who is himself fixated upon Clarire D'Anjou, a young novice with a passion for God so powerful that she has been sent home to New Orleans by the convent for a year's test of her vocation. In a city overrun by rats and awash in a mysterious plague, freedom and the consuming desire for self-sacrifice are pursued to harrowing, ultimately redemptive consequence. New Orleans--alluring, pleasure-loving, mesmerizing--remains both a force in its own right and a backdrop to the erotic contests at the center of the novel that established Martin as a major American voice.

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