Without knowing in advance that this book was very loosely based on the life of Margaret Mead, while reading I had the thought that the character Nell Stone's book parallels what Mead had written in Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies. Nell, her husband Fen (Schuyler Fenwick), and a third anthropologist, Andrew Bankson, are all studying tribes in 1930s New Guinea. Nell and Fen's marriage is rocky, due in part to Nell's acclaimed book about native sexuality. Bankson, has been battling his own demons and a failed suicide attempt led him to take a break from the tribe he was studying to assist Nell and Fen in the search for a new group to study. In the process, he becomes infatuated with Nell and a brief affair occurs. I got wrapped up in the characters in this award winning novel but felt the ending was less than stellar.
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