"My name is Amy. I am this awful music that you hear." Self-exiled from Ireland to the New Mexico desert, an Irishwoman of part-Amerindian ancestry is nowhere at home. Lovely Amy Webb's intelligence, talent and astringent wit connive to overcome the cruel austerities and racist attitudes that defined her Dublin childhood. Yet ultimately she fails to transform into love the passions that consume her, and in the process lives are ruined. Rich in remarkable characters and in scenes of stirring eroticism and the dark levity that masks despair, Human Child examines the casual ease with which mankind may slip into evil, and explores the mystery of human identity: part inherited, part created by each from his own desperation. Desire, vanity and willful misperception entwine with treachery and vengeance to create, in a contemporary setting, the timeless cloth of tragedy. Language plays co-protagonist: the narrator's prose glitters with exquisitely woven evocations and words selected for their musical resonance and their amplest connotations.