Foreword
Pursuing morality and immorality have been dominant goals for man since the time of recorded history. Among the proponents of morality are a group of philosophers known as Stoics; believers that man should be free from passion, unmoved by joy or grief, and submit without complaint to unavoidable necessity. One of the foremost apostles of this doctrine was Lucius Annaeous Seneca, whose fame and influence impressed even the theologians of Christianity during a period of horrible persecution, despite the fact he was not a believer of their faith. His philosophies penetrated into the minds of Montaigne, Bacon, Shakespeare, Ben Johnson, Racine, Milton, and Dryden. Even in the 19th century it attracted poets like Wordsworth and thinkers like Emerson.
On the side of immorality, there was a man whose very name was, and still is, synonymous with immoral excesses of all kinds and an object of utter detest to moral Christians. Nero! This man was ruler of the Roman Empire during its "Great Age" - a period in which it flourished and expanded under the guidance of a succession of "concerned" emperors.
It is ironical that two individuals of such vastly different moral thinking - to say nothing of behavior - should be remembered today within the same conjunctive thought. The irony, however, does not stop there. Both men evolved from the same era, both men lived within the same time span, and both of them resided in the same country. Extraordinary? Yes. But there is more. And the fact that they lived under the same roof is enough to boggle the mind in its incredibility.
Yet it is truth.
A truth that becomes even more ironical when one realizes that the infamous Nero with his scandalous behavior that few men have exceeded, was the pupil of the righteous Seneca, a man famous in his own right for his preaching of moral doctrine, of which the following is an example: Virtue is a lofty, quality, sublime, royal, unconquerable, untiring. You will meet virtue in the temple, the marketplace, the senate house, manning the walls, covered with dust, sunburnt, horny-handed; you will find pleasure sulking put of sight, seeking shady nooks.
You may, then, boldly declare that the highest good is singleness of mind, for where the agreement and unity are, there must the virtues be. It is the vices that are at war with one another.
So, the immoral emperor and the virtuous philosopher lived hand-in-hand. And when it came time to die, it was the same - death by their own hands.
From this contrast in character, of morality and immorality, the author has taken the threads, infused two of the most powerful themes in literature - revenge, and sexual attraction of man and woman and woven a tale.
We see in Jill Foster a personification of many of our social ills today. She is bitter, unhappy, and disappointed that the magic promises of life have dissolved under the heat of reality. At twenty-three she is suddenly widowed. When she learns of the man who has taken the life of her husband, she becomes an avenging angel of doom.
Under her neurotic plan for revenge, Jill becomes embroiled in a grotesque manhunt that pits her own morality against the overwhelming forces of evil. Offered a second chance to experience everything she has lost - sexual contentment, happiness, companionship - she finds herself caught in a whirlpool of depravity that springs from that initial quest for revenge.
In this graphic portrayal of vengeance and immorality, the final question is not resolved until the last page, and in the immortal words of Seneca, perhaps, lies the answer: "Revenge is a confession of pain."
-The Publishers Sausalito, California August 1972