Ann Workman is a naive student. A misfit of sorts, she's traveled all the way from rural Kentucky to graduate school in literature in 1967. But Anne wants more than a good education-she wants a boyfriend. Ann wants the 'Real Thing', to be in love with someone who loves her. Jimmy appears as if by magic, and is everything Ann's been looking for. Although he is from a very different place, a privileged background in suburban Chicago, he is a misfit too. He rejects his upbringing and questions everything. Ann and Jimmy bond through music and literature and their own quirkiness. They dive headfirst into what seems to be a perfect relationship, but with the Vietnam war looming over their heads, their future is vague and uncertain, and commitment even more so, and life's hardships prove too much for the young couple to endure. Ann recalls this time of innocence-and her own obsession with Jimmy-many years later, as she faces a different crisis. Seeking escape, she tries to imagine the road not taken. What if she had gone to Stanford University, as her mentor had urged, instead of a small school on the East Coast? Would she have been caught up in the Summer of Love and its subsequent dark turns? Or would her own reticence and good sense have saved her from disaster? Dear Ann is the devastating story of one woman's life and the choices she has made. Beautifully written and expertly told, Bobbie Ann Mason captures at once the excitement of youth and the nostalgia of old age, and how consideration of the road not taken-the interplay of memory and imagination-illuminate the present.