Amanda Grows Up: A Novel of Love and Sex

Eighteen-year-old Amanda Curtis is enjoying a cruise to Alaska with her parents when, to her amazement, she meets one of her literary idols, the novelist Henry Tomlinson. She becomes intimately involved with the forty-year-old writer, both during the cruise and when she begins her freshman year at the University of Washington in Seattle. But Amanda is forced to grow up fast on many levels. Henry is deeply troubled by the departure of his wife, Charlotte, after twelve years of marriage; and when Charlotte unexpectedly wishes to come back into Henry's life, how will Amanda react? And she herself falls for a fellow student, Vijay Dhabolkar, during her sophomore year. These and other emotional entanglements-including her parents' divorce and her mother Lisa's arrival at Henry's house-test Amanda's maturity as a woman and as a human being. In a novel full of intense sexuality and gripping emotional conflicts, Amanda Curtis finds that both she and the people around her gain a new sense of what love and sex can be.