It's December 2001 and a young, Midwestern college student named Tassie Keltjin is about to get a more worldly education when she accepts a part-time job as a nanny to the adopted child of a sophisticated middle-aged couple. What happens over the next year is told in the new novel, "A Gate at the Stairs."

"A Gate at the Stairs" is author Lorrie Moore's sixth book, including the acclaimed short story collection, "Birds of America" and the novel "Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?" Moore is a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.