When twenty-three year old Ruth rents a Manhattan apartment with her friend Selma she is a chrysalis of herself, cut off from the dark events that have shaped her. Faced with failed intimacies, disturbed relations with her Halocaust survivor parents and the enigma of a deeply felt but unremembered sorrow, she clings to her faith in the future. Severed from memories of incest abuse, she is the eternal ingenue, stumbling from one sexual encounter to another, then into a doomed marriage, her optimism intact. While she is misled by her deulusions, her determined romanticism nevertheless suggests a strength which will ultimately prove empowering.