Foreword
It has been argued among knowledgeable people that if attractiveness for mate selections is determined by similarity of attitudes, values, needs and background, the heterosexual choice from within the family is the most natural and understandable . . . except that custom and law forbid it.
Why this is forbidden is a question still hotly debated by anthropologists. Present-day science seeks to justify continuation of the prohibition against incest on biological and genetic grounds. Inbreeding brings recessive genes to the fore, they argue, and since these are largely maladaptive, thoroughly inbred groups show a tendency toward decadence. However, this process of deterioration admittedly stretches over many generations and presupposes continuance of the inbreeding process.
In this novel, the forbidden act of incest plays an important role in the lives of the Dow family, as well as the escapades of the nefarious Rosses, Will and Barbara, and is not apt, we feel, to be a reading experience quickly forgotten.
We also feel it pertinent, however, to remind our readers that the horror of incest is not a relatively recent development in human psychology and ethics. The ancient dynasties of Egypt and Peru practiced incest. Incest was indulged in by all of the archaic gods. The authors of the Book of Genesis must have accepted the idea as the sole means of explaining Adam's and Eve's descendents. The horror, then, of incest, which we all feel or pretend to feel, is indeed an acquired feeling. Since every race has adopted stern legal measures to prevent incest, it can only be because a desire for the act is one of the cravings which mankind is constantly struggling against.
Incest has been woven into the pattern of civilization since our earliest Hebrew records, and it will doubtless continue so long as man wrestles with the inner animal which appears to dominate him in many situations. However, as one reviews the progress of civilization and is able to contemplate the countless billions of genes and chromosomes which go into our rather dubious makeup, he is faced with the wonder that we are actually civilized at all. We are fortunate to possess, in spite of all else, a great capacity for love and tenderness and kindness and compassion, and as long as these emotions exist, the absolute fall of mankind may yet be avoided.
Yet, modern society is one of the greatest hypocrites of all time.
In one breath, the collective Voice of the dwellers of Society decries the "sexual degeneration" of our world, the collapse of latter-day mores; it denounces the growing permissiveness of a world made smaller and smaller with each passing decade by technological and scientific discoveries and advancements. And yet another equally loud voice pleads for Love with a capital "L" wife to love husband, sister to love brother, mother to love son, man to love woman and his fellow man. But now, when sexual experience is the ultimate expression of feeling, can the search for physical meaning and gratification and the need to give of oneself for the individual one feels so strongly for, be demeaned?
Simply, how can Love and Sex be divorced from one another in theory and in practice?
This is the theme of the soul-searching novel presented here; a novel of Man and Woman struggling against sociological pressures and teachings that are in total and violent conflict with their own drives and emotions. It is a novel of ultimate love and ultimate sex, relationships which can and will shock some more unenlightened readers but whose principle message is one which dates back to Greek antiquity and beyond, to the very beginnings of Time. It is a novel of Youth and the crossroads, of a Family at the turning point; a novel of denial and fulfillment, of fear and total peace.
Truly, we the Publishers, can say that this is a novel of Today . . .
-The Publishers