Winner, Harvey L. Johnson Award, Southwest Council on Latin American Studies, 1994

..".I didn't want to tell you the truth for anything in the world, because it seemed very humiliating to me..." The truth is that Iphigenia is bored and, more than bored, buried alive in her grandmother's house in Caracas, Venezuela. After the excitement of being a beautiful, unchaperoned young woman in Paris, her father's death has sent her back to a forgotten homeland, where rigid decorum governs. Two men--the married man she adores and the wealthy fiance she abhors--offer her escape from her...