In the diary that she would call "Fire," Nin sails to New York City and, having temporarily fled her static marriage to Hugh Guiler and her love affair with Henry Miller, indulges her infatuation with analyst Otto Rank. Her interest in the study of psychology grows, but in time she tires of Rank. - "I want to be a world all to myself...I feel like playing all the roles" - and she returns to Paris, Hugh, and Henry.

Settling into a "great serenity, a psychological moon life, " she is haunted by a rising dissatisfaction, which inspires her to seek out a new source of fulfillment. "I'm awaiting a lover. I'm restless, " she writes. "Things are calling me away." The cure for her disenchantment is the Peruvian Gonzalo More, who takes control, woos her in Spanish ("the language of my blood"), and stirs her to new heights. "Life. Fire. Being myself on fire I set others on fire."

Drawn from Nin's original, uncensored journals, "Fire" continues the story of one woman's quest to discover and liberate herself sexually, artistically, and emotionally. She also continues passionately the one affair that would last the rest of her life: "The diary is my world, my ego... I will no longer be ashamed of it."