The itch

With this novel, Benilde Little has created a drama about the African American upper class. These thirtysomething urban sophisticates - urbane men and elegantly hip women - lead lives of immense privilege in which each possession and every investment is blue chip.

Abra Lewis Dixon is the envy of the fashionable, professional women of her well-heeled social circle. She leads a charmed life - she has attended all the right schools, married very well, and enjoys every material comfort granted by her bourgeois existence. An executive in her own film production company, along with her best friend, Natasha Coleman, Abra is an ambassador from the world of perfection.

It is only when her impeccable marriage turns suddenly shaky that Abra's insular utopia is left in pieces.