As this volume opens, we see H. P. Lovecraft in desperate straits, stuck in New York City, a city he had come to loathe, and in a marriage that was failing by the day. His aunt Lillian D. Clark extended a lifeline to him by inviting him to return to Providence, R.I., and he jumped at the chance. Where exactly his wife, Sonia H. Greene, fitted into the new scheme was unclear. Lovecraft's ecstatic return to his native city unleashed...