The hero­ine of this nov­el by award-win­ning poet Alan Shapiro is Miri­am, a Jew­ish girl with star­dust in her eyes and a pas­sion for Broad­way musi­cals of the 1940’s. She espe­cial­ly reveres the char­ac­ter of Miss Julie from Jerome Kern’s musi­cal Show­boat and keeps a poster from the show over her bed, a diary in which she details every show she and her boyfriend, Curly, see, as well as every menu from every restau­rant they fre­quent. After he is draft­ed, she enjoys describ­ing her­self as ​“a fiancée pin­ing for her gor­geous sol­dier boy” in her diary. In actu­al­i­ty, she is relieved that he is away. For it is the idea of them as a cou­ple she enjoys infi­nite­ly more than she enjoys actu­al­ly mak­ing love with him. And we begin to notice that she seems to see every­thing in the third per­son, as if she and those around her were char­ac­ters in a play she is viewing.

When she gives birth to a girl she names her Julie. But she doesn’t bond with her the way she did with the character’s name­sake from Show­boat. And when she has two more chil­dren, both sons, Ethan and Sam, and they all sit togeth­er in her rock­ing chair one evening, she sings ​“Lul­la­by of Broad­way” to them while think­ing, ​“Some­one should take a pic­ture of this, what a pic­ture we’d make…”

Grad­u­al­ly we begin to real­ize that Miri­am is dis­con­nect­ed from her­self and oth­ers and this has trag­ic con­se­quences for her and her fam­i­ly. Sit­u­a­tions which seem unim­por­tant occur­rences to her, when ignored, become mon­u­men­tal draw­backs. Ethan’s bed-wet­ting, because it is neglect­ed, lasts so long that he can’t attend camp or a sleep­over, even as a teenag­er, for fear of embar­rass­ment. Julie’s lack of inter­est in com­mu­ni­cat­ing with her moth­er is nev­er dealt with, as Miriam’s nar­cis­sism makes her retal­i­ate by not inter­est­ing her­self in her daugh­ter. And Sam’s annoy­ance at hav­ing to spend long hours ​“babysit­ting” his grand­moth­er, which is con­ve­nient for Miri­am, has reper­cus­sions as well.

The posters from South Pacif­ic and Show­boat remain on the wall while her chil­dren grow up. Their pres­ence fuels Miriam’s desire to pro­mote Ethan’s singing tal­ent so he can become the star in the fam­i­ly. Yet, no mat­ter what suc­cess­es each child has, they are nev­er sat­is­fy­ing enough for Miriam.

A strange kind of jus­tice is served Miri­am. As things spi­ral down­ward, the sto­ry evokes chills and even hor­ror — a far cry from the opti­mistic mood at the begin­ning of this com­pelling novel.