“A painful and hilarious send-up of grandiose doctors and their barbaric medical miracles. . . . A postmodern Jane Austen romp.” – The Boston Globe
 
In a novel that brilliantly conjures up the resilience of the human spirit, Alice Adams draws a clear-eyed portrait of a woman who must overcome her resistance to the help offered by others.
 
Molly Brenner suffers from guilt and headaches. The guilt arrives with the insurance money she receives after the accidental death of her second husband (she was on the verge of separating). And the headaches she at first thinks are just a neurotic manifestation, but when she is diagnosed with a malignancy, she finds herself  once again depending on a man, this time from a profession she loathes, the medical profession.