From the bestselling author of "Resurrecting Mingus" comes the powerful story of a woman caught between the reckless life she once embraced and a future she longs to behold. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

Selah Wells, a successful photographer, is an emotionally remote and sexually voracious woman. Though she loves her minister husband, Parker, she is also regularly unfaithful to him. Adams (Resurrecting Mingus) weaves the story of Selah's childhood with that of her troubled marriage. The girl grew up with a neglectful and promiscuous mother, an absent father and a grandmother who slowly became addicted to painkillers. Selah is raped by a friend's brother at 13, and her strong spirit and precocious sexuality are sharply reined in by this abrupt introduction to adulthood. As she grows up, Selah finds a refuge from the emotional chaos of her youth in photography. It gives her power over her male subjects and allows her to foil their expectations by refusing to sleep with them. Yet when she falls in love for the first time with one of her clients, the tensions in her marriage come to a head. Selah's relationships with Parker and the other men in her life are compelling, but the melodramatic events of her childhood are familiar abuse story staples, and Adams draws overly obvious connections between these traumas and her adult emotional life. Though Adams writes fluidly, with flashes of wit (she describes Selah as "taking the time not to put on underwear" when she gets ready to do a photo shoot), Selah remains little more than a collection of socially defined traits, never quite gelling into a vivid, original personality.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

In Adams's second novel (after Resurrecting Mingus), Selah Wells is still haunted by a past touched by sexual experimentation and the absence of her father. Although married, she can't seem to stay out of other men's beds. Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

Selah alternates between a spare consciousness of her failing marriage and recollections of her lonely adolescence. She was deserted by a prostitute mother and raised by a strict grandmother, who is addicted to prescription drugs and determined that Selah will not follow her mother's example. To ensure that Selah will lead a different life, her grandmother, Mama Gene, forces the young woman to abort a child. Twenty years later, Selah is haunted by the lost child and her searing disappointment that her husband, the child's father, failed to commit to her in time to avoid the abortion. Selah takes refuge in photographing male nudes and reserves the private spaces of her life for momentary intimacies with her subjects. Her husband, Parker, takes refuge in religion. As Mama Gene nears the end of her life, Selah is forced to confront the harshness of her own life as she struggles to recover her equilibrium and her marriage. Adams, author of Resurrecting Mingus (2001), writes in vivid, sexually explicit language in a novel of self-discovery and redemption. VanessaBush. From: Syndetics Solutions, Inc. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.