Publisher's Synopsis
Part 1 At an airline terminal, Alf Whitmore reads his papers to gray-haired Addie Fulton. He speaks of freewill and fate, and about how "Entirety I" is often felt to be "just there", at hand. He thinks that a pathway can be opened to it...cleared...by being in a condition of "loving only". Part 2 In Shanghai, Alf and Rob, long-time pals, meet fate's bridges. Alf sees Ellen Quimby, clothes-concealed, a form he once met in Nepal...and, now, distantly, calls her a "sloughing pile of dung". Alf goes westward, to a China mountain...and encounters her again. He wonders why. At the "Inn of the Seventh Sorrow", Alf knows why he met her in Nepal at a time of being empty and loving, when he seemed cleared to universal awareness and to proper choice. And here, at the Inn, Ellen can keep her hiddenness and be forever comfortably alone...or she can let Alf tear away the covering.
