The entire novel S. is told in the voice of Sarah Worth as represented by letters and tapes mailed to relatives and friends from a motel near the Arizona commune. Other voices enter only when Sarah reports conversations in her letters or happens to catch the guru's voice on her tape recorder. The main character is thus a narrator whose point of view dominates the novel, but her limited understanding is apparent, and the reader must look between the lines for the truth of what is happening.

Sarah Worth is modeled after Hester Prynne, the heroine of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (1850). She has a daughter named Pearl, a husband who is a physician, and a mother descended from the Prynne family. As a modern character, however, she also has a dentist, a lawyer, and a hairdresser. What she needs, of course, is the fulfillment of heart and...