It''s Montreal, 1953, and eight-year-old Ellen, an only child prone to daydreaming, is living with her widowed Polish mother, a Marxist bookkeeper who maintains an optimistic view of the future. To make ends meet, she takes in post-war refugees from Europe, a group whose erratic behaviour is a source of fascination to her precocious daughter. What little Ellen knows about her own background is summed up in just a few stories and artifacts, among them a portrait of Sigmund Freud, whose status as a distant relative is a matter of great pride to her mother. The only constant in Ellen''s world is change, and the refugees soon leave to make room for Ellen''s Aunt Celia and Henryk Steiner, a doctor-turned-matchmaker whom Ellen learns is to be her stepfather. Suspicious of the glib Henryk, Ellen spends most of her time with her best friend Lydia, with whom she shares not only a cultural background, but also a growing sense of alienation. Together they negotiate the murky realm of sex and adolescence with all the resources they can muster, including the explicit advice of Lydia''s lustful mother, Magda, whose escapades set off a series of events that will alter the course of the two girls'' lives. Ann Charney''s moving novel captures the pulse of a pivotal decade in the restless consciousness of a young woman seeking to know her own mind.