The Other Woman

Anna Sheffield is an accomplished sculptor from a wealthy New England family. Before the rape, the world she knew was one of beauty, love and order. But one spring evening in San Francisco’s Mission District she was assaulted and raped by three men—three men who haunt her, but whose faces she can’t remember even now, two years later. Her work, her friends, her lover have all disappeared into a suffocating fog. She’s sought help from prominent psychiatrist Robert Buchanan, a specialist in sexual trauma, and she blames herself when they seem to be going nowhere. While she imagines a Robert of wisdom and compassion, the real one seems full of tricks and evasions. Or is she just hopelessly lost in a place no one can ever find?

For his part, Robert finds Anna maddeningly resistant. His approach, shaped by the work of Nietzsche and Wilhelm Reich, is to provoke action, will, and surrender to life’s driving forces. Anna’s patrician reserve is the obstacle here, he’s sure of it. While he fights to break through to the anger he believes will free her, memories from his own violent past bubble up. But that’s just more fuel for the fire. In his moral universe, guilt and innocence don’t come into it. To be a strong swimmer in life’s raging torrents, that’s what matters. It’s how he’s escaped the poverty of his youth and triumphed over his classmates at Princeton and Harvard. It’s how he’s beaten the odds, that he might be discovered and punished. Of course, he keeps all this to himself. The small-minded people around him aren’t ready. Except Anna. Why won’t she let him in?

While these two struggle, the agent of their release is on her way. A patient from Robert’s past, Michele Palmer, barges into their session demanding to be seen. All black lace, piercings and spectacular tattoos, she’s young, she’s angry, and she has something big against the doctor. Although Robert furiously rejects her, she’s gotten a look at Anna, and her quick mind never misses a trick. Here’s money. Here’s power. The money and power she needs to get to Robert. Because she has evidence, evidence she’s stolen from him and kept all the years since their time together. Evidence of Robert’s criminal past, that she means to use to get what she deserves.

Using her baby as bait, Michele contrives to meet Anna, hoping for a gullible partner in getting revenge. But even her fevered imagination couldn’t predict who Anna turns out to be, once she’s released from fear. Robert has been right all along—when it escapes its shadowy confines, the force of the unconscious can’t be contained. Magnetized by Michele’s wild energy, Anna is drawn into her fierce vendetta. And when Anna learns what’s driving her, the two women form an alliance that leads them deep into Robert’s past, and into the darkest corners of human crazing.