Tattooed Girl

<p>Celebrated author Joshua Seigl an idiosyncratic bachelor and confirmed recluse--young but in failing health--reluctantly admits to himself that he must hire a live-in assistant to help him with his increasingly complicated professional and personal affairs. Then one day at the bookstore he encounters Alma a young woman covered with bizarre tattoos who stirs something inside him. Unaware of her torturous past--the abuses she's suffered the wrongs she's committed the virulent hatred that seethes within her--Seigl decides that she is the one and he has no idea that he is bringing an enemy into his home.</p><p>With her unique masterful balance of dark suspense and surprising tenderness Joyce Carol Oates probes the tragedy of ethnic hatred and challenges the accepted limits of desire.</p>