"Is there any hope for a hypereducated thirty-year-old med student who would like nothing better than to be taken seriously sexually? That's what Mary ""Tennessee"" Settleworth, the dislocated heroine of this unsettling and wryly comic first novel, is wondering.
Tennessee, a native of Knoxville, is an all-around heretic: a Southerner who's happier up North; a Christian who favors Pelagius and free will over Augustine and original sin; a lady of urgent passions who has had no carnal engagements for a year. "