Twenty-nine-year-old Rayann Germaine, betrayed by her lover, flees in grief and rage. She meets book store owner Louisa Thatcher, a woman many years her senior, who offers shelter and work… and soon, passion, and a loving place in her life.
But Rayann encounters challenges to this new love—from friends who question its wisdom, from her mother who disapproves of this liaison with a woman her own contemporary, from Louisa’s son who learns for the first time his mother’s true sexuality.
And there are profound differences between Rayann and Louisa themselves, two women who come from dramatically different places in the spectrum of age and life experience. Their only common ground seems to be the searing attraction that they both try to deny…
Originally published by Naiad Press 1991. Second Bella Books edition 2012.
Bay Windows
Touchwood explores... with a deft, sensitive touch. It's a wonderful book...truly outstanding.
Bay Area Reporter
Deborah Pfeiffer -
Touchwood, 1990 - Kallmaker has a sure sense of the power of language and of the power of eros. The two are combined in scenes that left me gasping...with pleasure. Touchwood ... is a wonderfully written, wonderfully entertaining novel. That it addresses, with wisdom and compassion and delight, the most profound questions of who we are and how we define ourselves, is an extra gift, one to be treasured and enjoyed.
Watermark, 1999 - Of all Karin Kallmaker's very fine novels, Touchwood is my favorite. Watermark, a sequel...may even be better. This is a rich, compelling, wonderful novel, one that will live long in your memory and your heart.
lyle (verified owner) –
The characters were wonderfully detailed and very realistic in their reactions to various happenings during the story. Really liked how Louisa was able to describe to Rayann the huge difference in their environment they grew up in when it came to being gay.