Eager to escape her carhop mother and the rank and file of her California town,Megan Greene heads for Radcliffe -- in part to pursue an older man (twenty-one, Harvard medical school, Cape Cod summers) who represents her dream of the upper-middle-class, conservative East Coast. What Megan finds are four other girls -- Janet, Lavinia, Peg, and Cathy -- who seem to have little in common save for their freshman status. Neither they nor Megan could know that their destinies are about to inextricably intertwine.<P>The year is 1943, and these superior women, as often enemies as friends, willshare a place in each other's lives that no one else can -- not husbands, notlovers. Across four decades, as time and events sweep away their expectations,five women discover their sexuality, reveal their secrets, struggle withindependence -- sometimes surrendering, sometimes making stunning choices -- in Alice Adams' richly drawn, uncompromising novel about women's intimate,interior, and often unsuspected lives.