A melodrama of the ERA, a thriller of murder, sex, and politics in Richard Condon's own inimitably baroque and satiric style, set in the political landscape of the women's movement, The Entwining features a central figure unique in Condon's work: a heroine who is a powerful political figure--and a poor little rich girl. Jean Spano is a beautiful young woman shaped by the dreams of her dead mother that dictate her life and therefore the lives of presidents and parties.

A story of murder, ambition, sexual thralldom, and the working through of a woman's destiny, The Entwining is, above all, the haunting story of the impostion of one woman's will on the life of another. Through her diaries, given to her daughter Jean at twelve, the powerful will of her mother Charmian is pressed upon the plastic mind of her extrodinarily intelligent child. Born to riches and reared by her bachelor guardian, Jean grows to womanhood with her own translation of her mother's designs. Weaving together strains of idealism and stridency, she gives herself to a feminism whose fervor is surpassed only by her own lust to acheive.