Sweet Water

A literary detective story in which the expatriate writer Henry James's clandestine visits to a water spa in Vermont are discovered one summer by the hotel's current owners, a biographer and hose trainer. Their debate whether to reveal their discovery to others begins to unravel the secrets of their own marriage, kept since they met as teenagers at a cathedral school where Greta mysteriously suffered from the stigmata. A spacious novel about the feel of America its hydrophobia and fear of immersion, an ambitious and richly imagined tale of romantic intrigue by a gifted stylist. (Publishers Weekly)