The Road Not Taken

"The compelling story, told with effortless grace, of a suburban woman driven to become a warrior, a hero, a priestess." -Ms Magazine

Deborah has cosmic powers. She gulps absinthe with Van Gogh, enjoys mythic sex with Egypt's Osiris, soars from NYC to Paris with painters and thieves.

This is the story of a woman who is suddenly widowed at 50. Left with money but no direction to her life, she moves back to the West Village where she grew up. She is deep in transition from suburban housewife to living in the big city with a child from whom she is emotionally detached when she meets a woman who appears to be her identical twin. The woman is in fact, a member of the Lost: a group of 100 fully formed people dropped off on earth as it cooled down - they have lived on the planet as it developed the many species and geography of today.

The Lost show her the myriad dimensions of Time and Space, taking her to mythic lands: ancient Egypt as well as very real places from the past, Weimar Germany. They show her planets without inhabitants, and introduce her to loved ones she has lost to death. Having casual affairs with Osiris of Egypt, being raped by his brother, Set, finding a lover among the Lost, she lives many truths that are new to her.They walk with her into a painting of a house in Arles and meets Vincent Van Gogh. In her friendship with "Vincent" she learns who she needs to become.

But it is her friendship with Vincent that drives her deeper into an exploration of the world. Vincent grieves for his paintings - his poetry, heartbroken to discover they have been sold to rich people for huge sums of money. Deborah (our protagonist's new name) joins with painters of the 19th century who can make exact copies of Vincent's paintings - the ones that sit in back bedrooms of the ultra-rich. Berthe Morisot, Monet, Matisse and Otto Dix join in the project until all of Vincent's high jacked paintings have been recreated. Then Deborah calls on her mother, who is dead, but who was a fundraiser and organizer in her lifetime.

Together with her Lost alter ego, now called Vita, the three of them scheme successfully to steal all of Vincent's paintings and replace them with unimpeachable copies. In the course of this process, Vincent encourages Deborah to find her own talent, and her Contract with Creation: things she has never sought. As the story unfolds, Deborah must figure out what she did with the first half of her life, why she never attached to any real study or creative endeavor, and what she can do now to walk The Road Not Taken.