Syracuse: A Novel is both a love story and an initiation narrative about a young woman trying desperately to understand herself and her choices in a world and at a time where there are few role models other than sex-pots or wives and mothers. Living on her own, Liz Brown must make decisions about love and sex and intelligence and work and friendships, decisions that she is not always well equipped to make. Sitting in a cold shower, drinking gin, she decides that her life is fundamentally comic, and it is true that there is much to laugh about in this book. But there is darkness, too--and a lot of snow in Syracuse.