Melanie is a songwriter in L.A. who's sick of California. She returns to New York, takes a Greenwich Village apartment, and intends to resume her career and reestablish ties with her family. Life, however, is unpredictable. A chance meeting in an elevator leads to a relationship with Lucian, a beautiful young actor whose previous and--as it turns out--continuing relationship with Martin Ivory causes confusion and pain. It's July in molten New York, and Melanie is due in Maine, at Milk Lake, where her widowed mother, a doomed arranger of other people's lives, is reluctant to preside at her son-in-law's marriage to her cook/housekeeper. But that's the mere ticking of plot. The interest of this accomplished first novel lies in the character of Melanie, a woman whose unillusioned acceptance of how we live is delivered in an ironic, sweet-sour voice only the chastened romantic heart could muster. BACK EAST is a seamless novel about the dues everyone who loves somehow must pay.