Originally published in 1988, this first novel by Lawrence Naumoff is often called his most recognizably Southern. It follows the lives of a young woman, married to who she believes is a good man, living outside of Chapel Hill, and how she has thought that she has escaped her childhood, and all the things that happened, mostly relating to her father, who lives in a darkly comic world of what he would call "benign" racism, and a total misunderstanding and obliviousness to his long suffering--also rendered in a darkly comic way--wife. The book moves between humor and the serious business of Sally trying so hard to fix her life. The lives of the daughter, her husband, their parents, and an endearing street girl, all eventually enter the zone of truth and courage and responsibility of the events in their past, and they can then move on.