The Goddess is returning! She takes shape in the hands of an Episcopal priest’s shy, retiring wife. She invades the dreams of a grande dame who thinks women priests are a scandal. She lures a poker-playing ex-convict onto unfamiliar terrain. Then there is the mysterious old man in the wood, who’s been watching, waiting for a sign of her return. Who the Goddess? Where has she been for so long? What does she want from the four human beings whose lives she is turning upside down and inside out? As they confront these questions, Esther, Spencer, Marvin and Fergus find themselves drawn together, forging friendships across boundaries of age, class and race, discovering—and recovering—powerful, erotic passions. All their encounters, with themselves and each other, lead them deeper into Blackwood, an old estate that shelters an imperiled grove of trees sacred to the Goddess, a grove it becomes their mission to save.