In her first published book, Merrill Joan Gerber chronicles the struggles of life in twentieth-century America with tenderness and compassion. Relating a childhood memory of sex, an unwanted \u201cdressy\u201d wedding, a daughter-in-law's compassion for her husband's rejected parents, Gerber moves from the particular to the universal. In this collection of works originally published in the New Yorker, Redbook, Mademoiselle, and the Sewanee Review, Gerber explores family, love, loss, and memory with wit and warmth.