The story begins with Brieanna staring across the street at Miss Emily's three-story gabled house in the historic district of Waltham, New Jersey. With its Florida room, its "bookcases gleaming with richly bound volumes, flowered sofas strewn with pillows, gleaming antiques, and rich draperies," the house itself is one of the primary settings in the novel. For Brieanna the house is part of the mystery surrounding Miss Emily. It also stands in direct contrast to her brother's old house in downtown Newark. Both these houses represent, in some sense, choices Brieanna confronts about how one is to deal with materialism. Her brother, a street priest who moved to Newark to help unwed mothers, represents one very strong force in Brieanna's life.

Miss Emily, at least at first, with her charity groups and theater guild, represents another way of making life livable.

When Brie is not with her brother...