The silk road

the long version

"Hell is real. Hell is a New York suburb towered over by a billboard that reads: Have you been seriously injured? For the townspeople of Hell in the early 1970s, the metaphoric nature of their existence goes unnoticed. But nothing slips past Paige Bergman, a turbulent adolescent hurtling toward adulthood, weathering an overbearing and jealous mother and a zombified father; a Buddhist, motorcycle-riding lothario; coddled and clueless friends; gin-soaked housewives; and, above all, the shivering effects of alienation. Paige's wish for salvation, however, is granted when she stumbles upon an ethereal woman at the wheel of a Buick Skylark. Captivated by the beguiling - and pained - Mrs. Gallagher, Paige sees her fantasies turn into fact, observation into obsession. What happens after the two meet is as strange, disfiguring, and emancipating as the sudden flowering of a one true love."--BOOK JACKET.