In Samara the Wholehearted, Bauer transports her readers to the slightly tilted world of Summerland, a communal summer retreat, where a series of unusual encounters lead Samara to "adopt" her perpetually adolescent half-brother Fred and a disabled genius named Marty. Mixing the traditional techniques of storytelling with postmodern innovation and rarefied prose, Bauer produces a novel which is both technically adept and intensely memorable.