Grant is much more interested in her characters and the interaction among them than she is in the settings that serve as backdrops for the interaction.

Basically, Phoenix Rising inhabits the world of San Francisco Bay Area suburbia—complete with comfortable middle-class homes, shopping malls, grassy parks and occasional trips to rock concerts and Bay Area/San Francisco nightclubs.

Helen and her boyfriend, Bloomfield, visit the beach; she and Jessie baby-sit a little girl, Sara Rose Harris, who lives next door. Helen visits her doctor, Dr.

Yee, and attends the meetings of a cancer patient support group, and Jessie sees a therapist, Dr. Shubert. Both Helen and Jessie visit the gaudily pretentious home of their sometimes raucous, sometimes endearing friend, Bambi Bordtz. However, apart from a passing description of Bambi's mother's nouveau-riche choice of furniture, the settings these visits entail are almost totally ignored by the two...