A young girl arrives at the office of Sigmund Freud with symptoms that have baffled the best medical minds in Vienna. During a lengthy psychoanalysis, a disturbing dream surfaces that figures in a cure but whose deeper meaning Freud deliberately withholds. The novel traces the heroine’s subsequent journey to America to attend Vassar College, then back to Vienna where she finds herself in an arranged marriage marked by sexual bondage. Her efforts to escape an oppressive existence plunge her into a series of intrigues involving Carl Jung, the artist Gustav Klimt and her former analyst before she discovers how Freud’s failure to fully interpret the dream altered the course of her life. "With richly observed and vibrant storytelling, Cashdan offers us a stirring description of a young woman's harrowing journey to womanhood while simultaneously presenting the reader with a rare peephole into the lives of Sigmund Freud, Gustav Klimt and others who shaped fin de siècle Vienna. Well worth the trip." -- Laurie Fox , author of My Sister From the Black Lagoon and The Lost Girls "Sheldon Cashdan gives us a pitch-perfect account of Freud's world, taking us deep into the mysteries of the Vienna woods with racing narrative energy and élan -- historical fiction on steroids." -- Maria Tatar , author of Secrets Behind the Door and Enchanted Hunters Sheldon Cashdan is the author of two books on psychotherapy in addition to a work on the hidden meaning in fairy tales, The Witch Must Die. His books have been translated into over half-a-dozen languages and favorably reviewed in Publisher's Weekly, Booklist and The New Yorker. He and his wife live in Amherst, Massachusetts.