Kim Addonizio is used to being exposed. As a writer of provocative poems and stories, she has encountered success along with snark: one critic dismissed her as “Charles Bukowski in a sundress.” (“Why not Walt Whitman in a sparkly tutu?” she muses.) Now, in this utterly original memoir in essays, she opens up to chronicle the joys and indignities in the life of a writer wandering through middle age.

Rita Jackson is a young woman haunted by the murder of her mother when she was 13, and a young bride haunted by the disappearance of her husband, Jimmy, who split after a nasty argument more than a year earlier. When Rita witnesses the aftermath of a murder, she becomes involved with Gary Shepard, a married criminal investigator drawn to the dark side of this young woman. When a drunken night leads Jimmy to jeopardize his second and last chance, it seems unlikely that these sweet, damaged people will ever come to anything, let alone find and --- miracle of miracles --- save one another. But fate, in Addonizio's hands, works in strange and beautiful geometries. And redemption, she tells us, is never impossible.