As she embarks on her career as a grade 1 teacher of hearing impaired children, Theresa Dunn is affected by several aspects of life, hers specifically as well as of the times: her repressed Catholic upbringing; having body image issues from a scar on her lower back from surgery dealing with the scoliosis resulting from a case of polio as a child; coming out of an affair with who was her married college English professor, the self-absorbed Martin Engels, the relationship which at the time she believed was love and which ended on his initiative; and the liberation and narcissism of the times evident in urban nightlife. The Catholicism affected her and her two sisters in different ways, with Brigid being the poster child, and Katherine openly rebelling against it through several marriages - all of them open - drug use, and abortions. To get out from the repression, Theresa decides to move out on her own, living in one of the empty units in an apartment building owned by Katherine's current husband, Barney. While she is caring and compassionate in her professional life, Theresa begins to be reckless in her personal life, prowling the singles bars at night looking for sexual validation, which is easy to find in the many one-night stands she has. Among those sexual encounters, she begins a casual relationship of sorts with Tony Leponto, a hyperactive, volatile and thus somewhat unpredictable young man who usually just shows up whenever he has no one else. Their encounters become increasingly edgy bordering on violent, which nonetheless piques her sexual interest. She also begins a casual non-sexual relationship of sorts with James, the welfare case worker of one of her student's family. James, a Catholic himself, is the one she can and does bring home to her parents to maintain the façade of being the good Catholic. Through it all, Theresa has to deal with the consequences of the lifestyle she has chosen for herself.—Huggo