Halfborn Woman is the story of Arlen, a painfully observant girl who comes of age in early 1970s Tampa, Florida. When her charming rogue of a father walks out on the family, everything changes, and her mother, Olivia, passionate and insecure in the best of times, now rides a terrifying slide between depression and rage.

Arlen is left to play handmaiden and cheerleader to a woman who, feeling brutally rejected, now rejects her. Only in the aftermath of one of Olivia's increasingly frequent beatings can Arlen find something like the love she's been denied, finally cradled in her mother's apologetic arms. Nor can she find any real support in the new life her father has created for himself and the irredeemably banal trophy wife he's picked up.

Trying desperately to make her way between these two worlds, Arlen finds herself ever more lost. Unable to accept the true affection of her first boyfriend, Shems, she experiments instead on a middle-aged neighbor infatuated with her. But nowhere is she able to replace the love she feels her mother denies her. And as her life at home moves almost inevitably into deepening cycles of abuse, Arlen begins to test her own limits - and those of the life that now traps her.