In the title novella, Lily struggles to escape the depressed fatalism of her mother, to come to terms with the fact that she’s never had a relationship with her father, and to exorcise the demons of her loveless relationship with the father of her baby. Though she is stymied at every turn, Lily finds a sense of self-worth and the courage to take on the challenges of single motherhood. In "Beach Dogs,” Kiki sets out to scam Mummers, her mother, who is a mercenary manipulator, by using a homeless person as a tool. At the end of this tale of moral corruption, the daughter is surprised to discover a speck of empathy for her feckless mother as well as for her white-collar criminal father. In "Luau,” Syd Yasuda, a young college woman of Japanese ancestry, is betrayed by Fuzzy, her unmotivated Hawaiian boyfriend in the aftermath of setting up a wedding luau on a North Shore beach.