90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books On a military base in 1930s Georgia, Private Ellgee Williams catches sight of his captain's wife in the nude and becomes obsessed with her. But Captain Penderton - unhappily married to the unfaithful Leonora - in turn erotically fixates on Williams. Spare, muscular and sensual, with the dramatic vision of a Greek myth, Carson McCullers' novella is a timeless work about the alienation of forbidden desire.