The Sticking Place

Jessica Mann

Gus Seaton had the ideal existence-as a college professor, he had the cushy job of running a private research center on nationalism; on television, he was a charming, witty, and highly popular commentator. His wife, Rachel, pursued her career as a singer of classical and liturgical music, wrapped in the security of a comfortable provincial life. Then things begin to fall apart. First, Gus's right to the directorship of the research center and institute is bitterly attacked by a local Irish real estate broker who launches a smear campaign asserting that Gus is involved in a Scottish nationalist terrorist group. Following hard on the heels of this absurd accusation, Rachel's "best friend,"Lorna Hallam, begins to suggest that Gus might be seeing another woman.The comfortable surface of Rachels life begins to dissolve under the tension of her own well-founded fear of violence in the service of nationalistic “idealism" and the accidental discovery of clues that there may be more than mere slander and innuendo to the charges against Gus. Her teenage daughter's gestures of rebellion add yet one more turn to the screw, as the illusions of domestic tranquillity become even more difficult to sustain. In the midst of all these concerns, she is forced to play the heroine in a desperate adventure, cast in the role by complexities of fate and conspiracy far beyond her wildest fears and imaginings. It is Rachel who ultimately confronts her own true self at that moment of deadly peril-at the sticking place.