Tinderbox

Myra is a Manhattan psychotherapist. But when she learns that her phobia-addled son is moving back to New York with his wife and child, she responds with a mother's heart rather than the prudence that has guided her career. Myra invites her son's family to share her brownstone and hires Eva, from a Jewish community deep in the Amazon, as a nanny and housekeeper. Eva seems like the perfect addition, but as she reveals more of herself, the felicitous arrangement turns ominous. Slowly and inexorably, the relationship becomes too close, too entangled--and, ultimately, terrifyingly destructive.

With Tinderbox , the psychoanalyst and novelist Lisa Gornick gives us a gripping story of the tragedy of good intentions---a haunting mystery of hidden traumas and a searingly perceptive exploration of power and love.