"The ... saga of two women: the brilliant, bookish Elena and the fiery, uncontainable Lila. In this book, both are adults; life's great discoveries have been made, its vagaries and losses have been suffered. Through it all, the women's friendship, examined in its every detail over the course of four books, remains the gravitational center of their lives"--Amazon.com.

The brilliant, bookish Elena and the fiery uncontainable Lila have made life's great discoveries, its vagaries and losses have been suffered. Both women once fought to escape the neighborhood in which they grew up-- a prison of conformity, violence, and inviolable taboos. Now, in a Naples that is as seductive as it is perilous-- and in a world undergoing epochal change-- Lila and Elena clash, drift apart, reconcile, and clash again, in the process revealing new facets of their friendship.