R. T. Greer

The House on Hibiscus Street R. T. Greer

In The House on Hibiscus Street, R. T. Greer takes us to the Deep South for four stories of eroticism, longing, and consequences. "The Pool and the Live Oak" is the coming-of-age story of a bookish young man who spends a series of summer days in the limbs of a live oak, reading and watching a pool being dug. His fascination with the excavation is replaced by the fascination of watching the house's owner and her lover. In "The House on Hibiscus Street," a lonely housewife does alteration work while her husband works in the oilfields of the 1950's. Then one day she receives a new customer, and they feel themselves drawn into a whirlpool of passion with tragic results. "A Hint of Cinnamon" is the story of a young, white professional man who finds himself sexually attracted to a beautiful young black woman in a time in which it's implicitly taboo. In "At a Bend in the River," an old man recounts the first time with his first love, against a backdrop of 1920 Mississippi. These four stories are sensual tales, tales of desire and passion. They are for anyone who has ever been attracted to someone else, and especially those who have been attracted to the wrong person.