A novel of subtle ambition and seething regret, Hermit achieves a sense of desolation that few love letters hope to attain. With each passing day David forsakes the loss of his dear Charlene, and writes to her more urgently and impatiently, longing for her to return to him. The aging novelist seeks out every rhetorical means at his disposal, and in his longing only discovers more loneliness and more fear than he has ever known before, but also an elixir for all that which has ailed him. Sharp-tongued and desperate for change, Hermit encapsulates the zeitgeist of a culture seeking to reach beyond its own symbols for a clearer and more personal sense of identification, a more wholesome and satisfying pursuit of power, and a more liberated and spiritually significant sense of self.