“Stars above, sand below, Amanda waded waist deep through warm waves, enjoying the solitude of the North Carolina beach by night. She was nearly six weeks into her summer sabbatical and had been slowly working her way southward since the spring semester had ended at the New England University where she lectured in comparative literature. Amanda’s summer itinerary had been intentionally amorphous from the start as she was less concerned with where she was going than with what she was leaving: a long-running, long-dysfunctional relationship with a colleague that had finally imploded; a nagging suspicion that she was beginning to treat her students poorly; a boredom with the great works of literature that had once so moved her; a sense of anomie that had become positively strangling as it spread insidiously to touch everything that in turn touched her.”