Lucy and Jake live in a house by a field where the sun burns like a ball of fire. Lucy has set her career aside in order to devote her life to the children and to the house itself, which comforts her like an old, sly friend. But then a man calls one afternoon with a shattering message: his wife has been having an affair with Lucy's husband, Jake. The revelation marks a turning point: Lucy and Jake decide to stay together, but make an arrangement to even the score and save their marriage-she will hurt him three times. As the couple submit to a delicate game of crime and punishment, Lucy herself begins to change, surrendering to a transformation of mind and body from which there is no return. Told in musical prose, The Harpy is a dark fairy tale, at once mythical and otherworldly and fiercely contemporary. It is a novel of love, marriage, and its failures-of power, control, and revenge, of metamorphosis and renewal