"Sex makes monkeys out of all of us. If you don?t give in to it, you wind up a cold, unfeeling bastard. If you do, you spend the rest of your life picking up the pieces." --from Alma Mater From the bestselling author of Rubyfruit Jungle comes an erotic and heartfelt new novel of sexual awakening, family loyalty, and unexpected first love. Everyone on the William & Mary campus knows Victoria "Vic" Savedge. The six-foot-tall, raven-haired beauty can hardly blend into the cobblestones? especially on the arm of Charly Harrison, the school?s football star and son of one of Virginia's most prominent families. Now, at the start of her senior year, Vic's future is mapped out in detail, courtesy of her mother, R.J., and her aunt Bunny. The plan is simple: Vic will marry Charly and settle into the role of a well-respected politician's wife. Though bright and branded by a fiery streak of independence, Vic hasn't really considered any other options. Until she meets a woman named Chris. A transfer from Vermont, Chris is new to Southern mores and attitudes. Instantly captivated by Vic's beauty and larger-than-life personality, she finds herself drawn to the entire quirky but charming Savedge family. But the young women's friendship is not your basic college-girl variety. For neither can resist their mutual attraction?an attraction that erupts into a passion that will forever change the course of both their lives. To embrace her true sexuality and sacrifice happiness with a man whom she truly loves are the wrenching decisions that Vic must face. It is a struggle at once terrifying and exhilarating. Just when she makes up her mind, she discovers that fate has its own surprising plan awaiting in the wings. In her inimitable fashion, Rita Mae Brown brings to life plucky Southern sensibilities and characters grappling with profound emotional issues. A young woman's sudden, intense knowledge of herself?and all the conflicts and physical joys that it entails?are the backbone of this bold and tender love story. Brown, the author of the Sneaky Pie Brown mysteries, returns to her lesbian roots in Alma Mater. Vic and Chris are two coeds who meet at William and Mary College and, much to their surprise, are mutually attracted and launch an intense affair. Though Vic is involved with the star football player, and though neither woman has ever considered the possibility that she might not be heterosexual, this life-changing turn of events does not seem to faze either of them. Brown usually excels at offbeat characters, and while she does offer readers an amusing and outlandish supporting cast (thanks to the Southern locale), her latest novel lacks the freshness and believability of her now classic Rubyfruit Jungle. Still, fans will welcome her return to the theme of her earlier work. Recommended for most public libraries. - Caroline Mann, Univ. of Portland Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. Brown returns to her roots in a novel reminiscent of her early successes, Rubyfruit Jungle (1973) and Six of One (1978). Alma Mater is rife with daft southern sensibility from the moment William and Mary college senior Vic greets her new neighbor and fellow coed Chris, a northerner. Vic brings Chris home for a relaxing weekend, and soon Sissy Wallace screeches up to confer with Vic's lawyer dad because she has just shot her "Poppy." Why? He prefers daughter Georgia, who tried to kill him by dropping a bale of shingles on him from the roof, to her, and has accordingly changed his will, even though Sissy fired a warning shot over his head. Since this is just another incident in the "recurring cycles of violence" in Sissy's family, Vic's mom, R. J. ("Orgy"), casually mixes doubles for everyone, as Poppy and Georgia roar up the driveway in pursuit of Sissy. Never a dull moment, R. J. remarks--happily, since she loves to entertain. Never dull, indeed, as Vic and Chris develop a passion (aside from the three-way with Vic's fiance) that is sure to disrupt a world of southern gentility in which a woman fellating a high-school boy may or may not be statutory rape but, Georgia assures us, is certainly bad manners. Whitney Scott Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Praise for Rita Mae Brown's Outfoxed "Set in a small town in the Virginia Blue Ridge Mountains, the meticulously structured work could be a sociology thesis on the rarefied world of the fox hunt." --Los Angeles Times "Compelling . . . Engaging . . . [A] sly whodunit . . . A surprise finish . . . [Brown] succeeds in conjuring a world in which prey are meant to survive the chase and foxes are knowing collaborators (with hunters and hounds) in the rarefied rituals that define the sport." --People "A rich, atmospheric murder mystery steeped in the world of Virginia foxhunting . . . Rife with love, scandal, anger, transgression, redemption, greed, and nobility, all of which make good reading." --San Jose Mercury News "A snappy mys