Faculty wife Emily Stockwell Turner is beautiful, rich, and principled. However, five years in a marriage devoid of passion and virtuosity is enough to propel Emmy, despite herself, into an affair with cocky, silver-tongued Will Thomas, a music instructor at Convers College and a self-confessed libertine. A fire, a student riot, academic struggles and scandals, and some amateur witchcraft all form a backdrop to the lover's transgression.But there are very few secrets that can remain intact on a small New England campus--and the shocking, unforseen consequences of their affair will effectively shatter Emmy's most cherished, long held delusions about friendship, romance, and the ties that bind. A perfect subject for Alison Lurie's acute powers of observation and cosmic sophistication, "Love and Friendship" is a candid distillation of both purities and impurities of human nature.