Elsie was in her early teens when she was sent to an institution for the criminally insane after her young son was discovered dead by apparent suffocation. Elsie recounts the stories that caused others to be inmates,like Misty who killed her husband with a machete after he asked her to leave the matrimonial home; Doris, an uneducated house housekeeper who worked at the home of Mrs.Sam whose husband became her own husband after Mrs. Sam died; The nurse who oversees the institution and who has a deep and abiding distrust of Elsie; her own mother, whom she believes was wanton and promiscuous. Elsie struggles with reality and tells the story in the first person, leading the reader to have doubts as to her own sanity.