'In the middle of the night I announced that this was the last holiday I would ever go on. It was unbearable, I said, intolerable.' (Introduction)
The narrator prepares her home at a shelter for the arrival of her new baby, Lydia, who was born with Down syndrome. She has two sons and an ex-husband who abused them and who continues to send threatening, pleading letters. The narrator recalls her childhood with her German family, who she was taken away from to a child home.