From the author of the widely acclaimed The Chinchilla Farm comes a hauntingly wise novel about a woman coming to terms with herself as a mother; a lover; an artist, and a friend.<P>Twenty-five years after she last saw him, Lucy Patterson has been briefly reunited with Dr. Carlos Cabrera, who saved her son's life but wrenched her own onto a violent trajectory of loss. Now Lucy has retreated to an isolated motel outside Las Vegas, hoping to make sense of this visitation from her past.<P>But in the next room the present is calling, in the person of a young stripper who is as troubled and needy as Lucy herself once was. What ensues between them -- and between Lucy and the ghosts of her former life -- makes A Desert of Pure Feeling a work of vast sensitivity and power.