A version of love

the long version

"Set in northern California and Mexico in the twilight of the 1950s, A Version of Love illuminates the relationship between obsession and desire. The novel's lead players form a precarious triangle: Edmond, a psychoanalyst who has sex with his patient; Lorle, who has been in treatment with him for "hysteria" for several years; and Vern, a loner in the Sierra foothills who goes panning for gold and then love. With masterful control, Millicent Dillon charts the complicated interplay of the lives of her characters as they search for fulfillment in one another's love. We enter Lorle's vulnerable, bruised psyche and observe Edmond's vacillating, desperate needs as if we are immediate bystanders, and yet Dillon reserves judgment, allowing her characters' actions to dominate."--BOOK JACKET.