With America quietly gearing up for war in the Middle East twenty-year-old Tassie Keltjin a half-Jewish farmers daughter from the plains of the Midwest has come to university
- escaping her provincial home to encounter the complex world of culture & politics. When she takes a job as a part-time nanny to a couple who seem at once mysterious & glamorous Tassie is drawn into the life of their newly-adopted child & increasingly complicated household. As her past becomes increasingly alien to her
- her parents seem older when she visits; her disillusioned brother ever more fixed on joining the military
- Tassie finds herself becoming a stranger to herself. As the year unfolds love leads her to new & formative experiences
- but it is then that the past & the future burst forth in dramatic & shocking ways. Refracted through the eyes of this memorable narrator A Gate at the Stairs" is a lyrical beguiling & wise novel of our times."