"August" (Houghton Mifflin), Rossner's most successful novel following "Goodbar", was published in 1983 to critical acclaim. This story of 18-year-old Dawn Henley who undergoes psychoanalysis with Dr. Lulu Shinefeld, who has issues of her own, was a significant best seller, spending 19 weeks on the "New York Times" list. On page one of "The New York Times Book Review", Walter Kendrick wrote, "I know of no other account, imagined or factual, that gives such a vivid picture of the analytic experience, on both sides of its intense, troubled, ambiguous relationship."