1972, Black River Falls: Alicia Western, with forty thousand dollars in a plastic bag, admits herself to the hospital. Alicia has been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and she does not want to talk about her brother, Bobby. Told through the transcripts of Alicia's psychiatric sessions, Stella Maris is a searching, rigorous, intellectually challenging coda to The Passenger. One of America's greatest writers, returns with a pair of books.