Includes bibliographical references (pages 301-302).

Myra is a Manhattan psychotherapist. A quick study and an excellent judge of character, she thinks she knows what she's getting when she hires a nanny--it's her job, after all, to analyze people. Her phobia-addled son has just moved back in with his wife and child, and the new nanny, Eva, seems like a perfect addition: she cleans like a demon and irons like a dream, and she forms an immediate bond with Myra's grandson. But as Eva, a Peruvian immigrant, reveals more of herself, what seemed a felicitous arrangement turns omininous.