Title: Pearl City Control Theory
First published: July 15, 1999
Description: Pearl City Control Theory--a novel of city Buddha-mind walking, love, and breaking free

When Sara’s husband, Mark, goes to the East Coast for law school, Sara stays behind in her beloved San Francisco. Their marriage will be BCDR -- bi-coastal, dual rental. It’s only for three years, Sara tells herself. An admirer of efficiency, she intends to keep loneliness at bay by moving in with her erratic sister, Amanda, and by staying busy at work in her newly promoted position as a manager for a large consumer products manufacturer.

But Sara’s tightly controlled world starts to crack when she accepts the help of an inscrutable mentor and begins volunteering at a domestic violence shelter on the weekends. As mercurial Amanda does her best to disarray the order of Sara’s life, challenges at work and at the shelter test Sara’s resolve and illuminate the fissures in her careful structures. To top it off, Sara finds her mentor far too helpful when she knows she shouldn’t be seeing him at all . . .
Subjects: walking, manufacturing, domestic violence shelter, poetry, Man-woman relationships, Women executives, Fiction
Places: San Francisco, Paris, Washington D.C., Georgetown
People: Edward Deming
Time periods: 1998