A creative, individualistic woman risks following a vision to a place that ends up changing her to a new, true, risky, loving self. Dostoyevsky said, "Beauty saves," and, in Jacqueline Gay Walley’s The Waw, a woman leaves her New York life to follow an image she has seen of a small town of great beauty by the sea in England. She does not quite know why she does this and is frequently asked and gives different answers. There she encounters remarkable people of strength with whom she explores music, love, dignity, and the gifts of solitude coupled with the gifts of community. She, in addition, is having a collection of her writings published which is daunting to her since she knows she will now be revealed, and not so pleasantly, and this unglues her. Along the way, the reader gets a wry look at publishing. The narrator is also wrestling with how the world’s changing is being reported in such a vituperative manner. She also has a boyfriend in New York who visits and reveals himself in ways unforeseen.

At the same time, she meets two men on the island, who astound her in their lack of artifice and sly profundity. She finds herself in love and more open than ever before. All of this put together strips her down to her essence, where the beauty of the place and people are able to transform her to a better self. The book is written in an inventive style: novelistic, seemingly memoir, often poetic, sometimes with a touch of magic realism.