Superior Women did not become part of any series, nor do these characters appear again elsewhere, although some of the settings do. The contrast between the South and the West, here epitomized in Lavinia and Megan, is internalized in the dual personalities of many Adams's heroines, and the way geography is reflected in lifestyle and character is a common theme. The New York and European settings are special to Superior Women, but the transplanted New Englander in California is found in many of her novels, especially in Second Chances, where the denizens of San Sebastian are from New England and Louisiana, and in Medicine Men (1997; see separate entry), where the central character is a Southerner divorced from a New Englander who now lives in California. The comedy of manners set up by Southern, Western, and Eastern lifestyles and cultural differences provides conflict between and within Adams's...