Lori begins her narrative by stating that “[i]t was a hot night in August 1976, the summer of [her] seventeenth year, when, uninvited and unannounced, the Voices took over [her] life” (3).

It is the summer before her senior year in high school, and therefore also Lori’s last year at a summer camp named Lincoln Farm. Initially, she came to Lincoln Farm as a young camper, but this summer, she is a counselor. She recalls this summer and herself as plain and ordinary, “except that sometime during that summer things began to change” (3).

She recounts that, at the outset of the change, her sensory and emotional experiences suddenly became more pleasantly intense. She felt full of potential, energy, and friendliness. She recalls: “I was strong and attractive, powerful and exciting. It seemed that everyone around me had only to look at me to love me the way I loved them” (4).

Also, two years earlier, when she was 15, Lori had fallen in love for the first time at Lincoln Farm: with a 23-year-old, handsome and exotic exchange student. They shared a summer of flirtation and intimacy. However, several weeks after camp ended, the young man showed up at Lori’s home in Scarsdale “with a pretty woman whom he introduced to [Lori’s] parents as his fiancée” (4).