The three novellas that comprise Sermons and Soda-Water all deal in various ways with human relationships as they are affected by time and social conditions. In the first, "The Girl on the Baggage Truck," the setting is primarily New York in the 1930s, a world of speakeasies and vast differences between the rich and the poor. O'Hara uses his knowledge of the film industry in presenting the figure of Charlotte Sears, a movie star whose position as a public figure prevents her from having a normal love relationship and involves her with a snobbish, back-biting crowd. In "Imagine Kissing Pete," O'Hara turns again to Gibbsville, to chronicle the decline of Bobbie and Pete McCrea from a position in the Gibbsville social scene to near-poverty through drinking and infidelity, and their slow struggle to regain respectability. The third novella "We're Friends Again" returns to New York and...