Penelope-Marie Lancet yearns for a child. A baby would mend her life, a baby would heal her maimed relationship with the world. A false pregnancy ignites her conviction that her child has been taken away.

She tells of Penelope's obsession, her tragic history, her theft of a baby, and the fragmentation of her personality. In letters to her sister Jasmine, at least six personalities write in their different voices, at first in turn and then interrupting one another. As Jasmine arrives from Trinidad and knocks at the door of Penelope's Calgary apartment, the inner dialogues become cacophony.