Alice Clark has been trying to avoid an acute state of "not-knowing" about what's happened and what's happening. Whatever happened has much to do with why three of her friends died early and badly and she did not. Alice is a mess, and her story is a mess too—digressive, disheveled, and wild. She takes us across the United States in an overdue effort to find out what part she's played, or failed to, in her own life. Along the way she revisits her memories and meets a variety of "Cheshire cats," who in scary, rude, and seductive ways help her to keep going and find things out... or not.