New York: Ecco Press, (2003.) dj. Hardcover first edition - When a reclusive author is forced, by his declining health, to hire an assistant and chooses a naive and sensuous young woman with tattoos over most of her body, complex emotions and, ultimately, tragedy, results. "With her masterful balance of dark suspense and surprising tenderness, Joyce Carol Oates probes the contemporary tragedy of ethnic hatred and challenges our accepted limits of desire." 307 pp. ISBN: 0-060531061.