The author of the beloved novels Gospel and Emma Who Saved My Life, Wilton Barnhardt is a writer of rare and extraordinary talent who has yet to walk the same ground twice. With Show World he offers a contemporary woman's story that will haunt its every reader. Samantha Flint, the figure at the book's center, flees the Midwest for Smith College to shake her past, to invent a future she can live with. There she meets the redoubtable Mimi Mohr; together and apart they move from New York to DC to LA. Yet even as each new city takes them to fresh heights of power and wealth, everything Sam wants seems to elude her--and after a series of lapses, both desperate and careless, she finds her dreams have turned against her.

A work of withering satire and unmatched imagination, Show World is Wilton Barnhardt's clear-eyed estimate of America and what we all want out of her.