Two cities

At the center of the story is Kassima, a young widow who is mourning her husband and sons, lost to the violence of Pittsburgh streets. Defending herself against further loss, she allows no one to get close to her - until she is tripped up by a passionate affair with a gentle man named Robert Jones, who yearns to break through the barriers Kassima has erected. When violence threatens his life too, she retreats, to "find out what's inside of me I can lean on besides love." But the two are reunited by the death of Kassima's tenant, old Mr. Mallory. A self-educated eccentric who roamed the…