A young woman lies in critical condition in a Bronx hospital, the victim of an assault. As her crisis looms her boyfriend spends a frantic weekend wandering through New York City trying to come to grips with the disaster, his mind filled with thoughts of her as well as reflections on his past life.

Set in the 60s and using flashbacks and a variety of interior-monologue techniques, the novel chronicles through layers of memory and the narrator's shifting consciousness, his stark realization that in a world where everything he most values can be snatched away in an instant, his previous understanding is not enough to sustain him through the ordeal he suddenly confronts. Only a spiritual journey within can bring him to a more vital and encompassing view of reality.

A Vietnam war veteran's search for redemption in the Holy Land is the subject of this contemporary version of the Divine Comedy. The leader of a platoon of soldiers that took vengeance on a small village and its inhabitants attempts to come to terms with his descent into evil in this rendering of Dante's journey from darkness to light. Set in the 70s, many of the scenes in the three parts of the medieval allegory are represented throughout this adoption by using the novel's characters in a variety of guises. More profoundly, an exploration of the paradoxical nature of individuality brings this modern pilgrim to a clearer understanding of himself and his world, though not the one he had originally expected to find.

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.

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.

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.

"Fireflies" is a modern rendering of Moby Dick, with most of the prominent characters and incidents from that work included, though somewhat transformed. Ahab and Ishmael have become two Jewish sisters from Brooklyn: Queequeg, a reformed Harlem drug dealer, and Pip, a deaf Indonesian dancer. Starbuck, Flask, Stubb, and even Bulkington, Feddalah, and Father Mapple are all here to partake in this adventure.

But whereas Ahab strikes out in rage at a malevolent cosmos, symbolized by the white whale that crippled him, Maggie's instinct is to channel her wrath at fate's apparent hostility into creating The White Elephant, a "pure" theater in which the vast wisdom of the past might once more flower. Her relentless pursuit brings a dark victory, enabling her to impose her own ephemeral order on one small corner of an otherwise enigmatic universe.

As did its famous precursor, this novel ponders those profound questions that so troubled Melville, while affirming once again that the greatest adventure has always been the exploration of the possible.

A modern depiction of the Faust legend set in New York City in the 60s, "Pipe Dreams" concerns a young singer's obsession with a Broadway career. His dreams of success, however, lead him to stray into a series of compromises that prove disastrous and precipitate his 'pact with the Devil' and his sacrifice of the gifted young ballet dancer whom he loves. In the startling climax, he is forced to reexamine his values and those of the society that shaped him, as well as his understanding of what constitutes success.