In the Ruins

Parole Officer Maria Peres confronts Brooklyn's volatile streets and disturbing incidents in her own past while hunting a parole violator who has committed a particularly heinous crime. More profoundly the novel explores a young woman's search for a meaningful life in a flawed world where morality is relative and terrible acts are committed gratuitously.</p><p>The poetry of one of the novel's characters provides a further level of exploration. While ostensibly narrating the Aztec's fall to the conquistadors the verse by suggesting a parallel between the historical characters in the poem and the characters in the novel itself leads to reflections on the ambiguous nature of individuality and its relationship to the past.</p><p>This inward journey uses flashbacks and time shifts to create an ambiance of simultaneity as well as a portrait of the city-a city that emerges as one of the novel's unifying themes.</p>