An unnamed but fairly reliable author employs memoir, poetry, and fiction to identify nine women who influenced his life and contributed to his development as a writer: a young Japanese girl met during the occupation after World War II, a first love in college, a promiscuous woman in a room across the alley, an Austrian girl encountered on a pilgrimage to Lourdes, a first cousin in Vienna, a hospital nurse on the night shift, a captivating divorcee, a younger Viennese cousin, a poetess at a writers workshop. A story inspired by each of his muses rounds out the picture But what about his wife? Was Blake right in stating that a wife is not a muse? In the final section the author resolves this issue to his own satisfaction.