"Old boats are like a beautiful woman," observes a passerby on the dock as he inspects the steam yacht Galatea. "They call to you. They entice you. And then they steal your soul." He calls that feeling "the sickness." William Henry Wheelock has achieved his ambition of becoming a professor of classical studies and settled down in a cottage on campus with his wife Jane and young daughter Dani. But Jane is ill-suited to the quiet, academic life and-in a fit of rage ignited by an old misunderstanding-suddenly leaves him for parts unknown. William Henry plods on stoically, teaching his classes and raising his daughter, while the social upheavals of the 1960s change the world around him in ways he doesn't always understand. Then one day the embattled professor falls under the spell of an older woman, Galatea, an antique from the Gilded Age, and his life promises to change completely. Sequel to the Wheelock family history that began with The Judge's Daughter, this novel follows the next generation through a turbulent twenty years filled with longing, love, greed, deception, and madness.