As a pregnant teenager she was sent away to avoid scandal and possible legal consequences. Shuttling back and forth between two time zones—the 1970s and the present—and set in a Cheever-esque suburb of sadness and shame, deals with the savagery of respectability, betrayal, and the desperation that ensues when a sixteen-year-old girl gets pregnant and feels she has no one to help her, apart from her friends. Hickey ( , ) shows herself to be a storyteller of rare ability and a stylist of clarifying beauty.