[citation needed] The book is about Cora Sharpe, a Hollywood screenwriter who is eight-and-a-half months pregnant by her boyfriend, an attorney named Ray, a relationship that has gone wrong.

Concerned that she will not survive labor, Cora begins to write long letters to her unborn child.

Her relationship with Ray became more complicated by the arrival of his mother, who came to live with them to recuperate from breast surgery.

When another friend, William, who is in the final stages of dying of AIDS, moves in, Ray decides that Cora's efforts to care for William during his final days on earth signals that he, Ray, is not her top priority in life.

As things get out of control, Cora returns home to her mother, a retired musical comedy star, and Bud follows.