Amalie in Orbit

Overeducated, coddled, and sharp-tongued, Amalie Price suddenly finds herself a widow at 40. Left with no financial resources by her activist-and possibly unfaithful-husband, she faces the need to earn a living as well as the imminent eviction from her apartment. Her secret work as a French porno translator just isn't enough to sustain her and her teenage son, who keeps threatening to join a guerilla movement in Latin America. Amalie mobilizes herself in record time as she takes on the New York City bureaucracy, lands a job, attempts to make peace with her offspring, and fights off-or succumbs to-a variety of men in hot pursuit: a composer who bases his music on cuts of meat, her messianic new boss, and a lawyer who relies on his dog for legal strategy. Set in Manhattan's Upper West Side, *Amalie in Orbit* is an insightful and hilarious tale of one woman's transformation.