Her only two relationships are with her talking cat Tule and her heroin-dealing boyfriend Jack Konar, whom she rescued when one of his drug deals went bad.

The Mafia, learning of Lea's secret ability to kill with a thought, tries to get her to fix a boxing match, which she bungles by targeting the wrong contestant; now the local boss has it in for her.

According to Paul Kincaid, writing in Strange Horizons, the novel "read[s] like a crazy, quirky short story that got away from the author and grew way beyond its natural length ... a pretty good novella [that] has been bulked out artificially to qualify as a novel."

Kincaid also finds the novel's Yiddish "bounce and rhythm, which "gives [Fintushel's] short stories their particular verve and character ... rather tiring" put in the mouth of the explicitly non-Jewish narrator.

He deems the book's "remorseless" pace, "succession of determinedly quirky characters," and "one-pitch narrative voice" exhausting to the reader, while noting "there are enough set-piece scenes and sparkling passages of dialogue [to] remind you how good [the author] can be when fully in control of his material.