Synopsis:
Meredith Ruth (M.R.) Neukirchen is the first female president of an ivy league university, clearly modeled after the author's own place of work, Princeton. She is driving to upstate New York to deliver a speech about the Iraq war, which she is opposed to in spite of the politics of her school's opinionated donors. Understandably, she's stressed. Not-so-understandably, this leads her to abandon the presentation to visit the mud flats that overrun the town where she grew up.
Soon, the trauma of her childhood is revealed to us: Her wayward mother attempted to drown her in those very flats; her mother's husband sexually abused her; she was taken in mistakenly by another fanatically religious couple. M.R. (aka Mudwoman) begins to lose herself in these memories, and her psyche begins to deteriorate, as she and the reader lose sight of what's real and what's not.
Deborah says: Complex story that modern women can relate to. Interesting dream-state fugues.
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