Robin and her mother live in a spacious, old house in a middle-class suburb of New York City. This seemingly simple setting is very important to understanding Robin and her responses to life. Conrad says that her young adult novels "begin with settings," and that the Lewis house is, in fact, the house she was living in when she was writing the book. She also acknowledges that the town in which the novel is set is the town in which she presently lives: "a nice suburban place where kids ride bicycles, take trains, and sell holiday paper." Because Robin has grown up in such a sheltered, secure environment, she is ill-equipped to understand or deal with Mary's problems. She has no first-hand experience with alcoholism, brutal fathers, or mothers who abandon their children.

Robin doesn't even know, until the end of the novel, that the area has a...