Althea

Althea is someone you have known all your life; a woman bruised by her past who lives in flight from the present, sheltered by a devotion gladly given in tribute to her charms. The Althea of Grace Zaring Stone's arresting novel is a Southern woman, still young, who has fled a devastating and unnamed experience and come at last with her aunt to a seacoast town of Connecticut. Here they are joined by Althea's cousin a mercurial man, pursued by his own devils, who finds solace in alcohol. Arriving one night in the company of a neighbor, he is shocked by the change in Althea from the radiant girl he remembers, the adored center of her Kentucky circle. It is the neighbor, a surgeon from New York on sick leave, who—drawn into Althea's small and tension-charged world—who observes and relates the events of the next few weeks. Going from bewilderment to enchantment to horror, he sees the threads of tragedy untangle to reveal the fears and passions and prejudices which work poisonously to separate man from his fellows and from himself.