Here is a delight: MacDonald Harris's colourful, fanciful, and moving Herma, the story of a wilful young woman who conquers the musical world of the Belle Epoque. Herma is many things: a glamorous story of a singer who rises from the choir of a country church to stardom at the Paris Opera: the parallel adventures of her agent and friendly enemy Fred Hite, filled with the excitement of the early days of aviation; and a provocative sexual intrigue whose twinned her and heroine, not brother and sister, are forbidden to each other by the secret that lies at the centre of their odd and intimate relationship. From its evocative beginnings in the pastoral Southern California of the turn of the century, Herma moves on to larger worlds: first the brash, adolescent San Francisco of the period, then the Earthquake, then the international world of opera in Paris at the most luxurious, opulent, and decadent moment of its history. Erotic, bejewelled, crowded with incident and a big, vivid cast of characters, Herma is MacDonald Harris's richest and most complex novel.