This is not a coming-of-age story; it rather picks up a heroine who has come and tests her awareness against changing experience. The internal structure is based on sequential action, one episode flowing into the next. It becomes the story of an originally naive young woman who, breaking into the sex scene, indulges to the full, silently acquiring a take-on-the-next attitude of the hedonist. Publicly, she becomes a force, a woman looked up to in town, who seems destined to be in conflict with the locally intimidating fat Tony (Dimmallo) who wants it known he's Mafia, an implicit claim that she infers is bogus-though he remains nonetheless feared. He acquires wealth, mostly in legitimate businesses (illegal when necessary) and exploits his Puerto Rican farmhands.