This gripping novel of adventure, love, and religious persecution follows the life and flight of a Jew under the Spanish Inquisition.

Longing is a psychological novel focusing on a young woman's dependence on her husband and her attempts to forge an independent life for herself by escaping their unhealthy relationship. Rosa, a frail, sensitive American Jew living in Paris, marries an alcoholic expatriate from Chile and finds herself trapped in a sado-masochistic relationship. Amid a series of fast-moving events - the birth of their daughter, moves to her parents' home in New York and then to Sausalito, California, and various sexual encounters - Espinosa explores Antonio's fears and failures and Rosa's implicit trust in him to direct her life. Ultimately, Rosa begins to question her relationship with her husband and her parents.

Extending the story of the troubled life of Rosa, a character first developed by the author in "Longing," this novel describes her difficult relationship with her mother, Eleanor. Rosa's story unfolds as though in a parallel world: dogged by the same obsessions as her mother and resorting to sex and madness as elements of destruction. At the core of their tension is the illicit affair Eleanor has had with her daughter s husband, Antonio. Both Rosa and Eleanor find the defining focal point in the same man, whose gift for interpreting the longing of others means his own bitter destruction. Narrated in two voices from perspectives of both women, this novel describes both their lives in depth, covering a span of nearly 70 years during which the world around them undergoes enormous change."