"In the title story, a child inhabits her own private realm within a maze of corridors and rooms in a hotel in Brazil; she comes to recognize the truth of what she has heard, even if it is a lion rumbling down the hallway in the night, even if her mother tells her it can't possibly be so. In "The Blue of the Madrugada," the girl grows into a willful young woman, and discovers the complexities of love by the light of blue candles. In "Taken for Delirium," amid the revolving seasons and nature's endless regeneration of the Ontario woods, the woman and her husband cope as their marriage falters. And in "The Still Point," the young wife and mother, in a Mexican landscape mysterious with unexplained occurrences, breaks free of her bonds."--BOOK JACKET.