This non-fiction essay collection examines the author's entry into what Jane Smiley terms the age of grief. Smiley describes it as a period in a person's life when she realizes "a lot of acquaintances and friends have died and all the others are getting ready to sooner or later....the barriers between circumstances of oneself and of the rest of the world have broken down... after all that schooling, all that care." The separate essays build a braided narrative of a young woman grappling with pain in a degraded world. The collection mourns past and future loss, and explores types of insurance we have against suffering.