This concise, reflective novel explores a network of friendships and acquaintances from a unique perspective. We travel through Janet Fordice's address book into the lives of people she knows and discover the nature of her relationships with them. She decided some months before the story begins to cull and edit the family address book that had become over-crowded with out of date and unused addresses. She viewed it as a chance to impose some order on her life, and cut some unnecessary threads to the past: a liberating if tedious activity. Since then trauma has enveloped her. The true nature of her situation is gradually revealed to both the reader and her longstanding friend, Dorothy, who helps her with the task of discovering the truth about Janet's life and the people who inhabit it.