Having just returned to Miami from a failed, month-long reunion with an old flame, "Sir Gold," and a visit to her fragile mother, our narrator, J, begins an assignment to translate Ovid's magical stories about the transformations caused by Eros. "A woman who wants, a man who wants nothing. These two have stalked the world for thousands of years," she thinks.
When not ruminating over her sexual past and current fantasies, in the company of only her aging cat, J observes the comic, sometimes steamy goings-on among her faded-glamour condo neighbors. One of them, a caring retired nurse, befriends her, eventually offering the opinion that "if you retire from love. . .then you retire from life."
Set against the backdrop of exquisitely beautiful flora and fauna and seascapes, Nine Island culminates with an equally beautiful gift from one friend to another.
