In spare, poetic prose, Joyce Hinnefeld writes of the ordinary lives of women who find themselves desperate to connect with others. Whether in a boyfriend's house on the outskirts of Chicago, in an apartment in New York City, near an Amish farmer's field in Indiana, or in the pool at the Y, Hinnefeld's women often feel as if they are swimming upstream against a current they can't name.

When these women do find a voice, it emerges in unusual ways (an outlandish doll collection, a subverted tray of Christmas candy, a rediscovery of the pleasures of sound and skin) and leads, however precariously, to the moments of connection they so long for.