After physically assaulting one of her husband's best friends, Samantha has a mental breakdown and ends up in the psychiatric unit of a hospital where she is forced to confront the atrocities in her past that led her to such a violent act. The challenge of confronting these atrocities is the focus of this novel. Samantha launches directly into the years of abuse she experienced at the hands of her stepfather, laying out it's agonizing physical and mental effects and from there spins a narrative of her life before and after the abuse weaving in memories of her father's abusive behavior towards her mother and how she reenacted it by entering into abusive relationships as an adult. In the midst of each brutal episode from the initial act of abuse at age 14 through coming to terms with her own destructive tendencies, Samantha's wit is as powerful as her candor.