[1] Sissy Hankshaw, the novel's protagonist, is a woman born with enormously large thumbs who considers her mutation a gift.

[2] The novel covers various topics, including free love, feminism, drug use, birds, political rebellion, animal rights, body odor, religion, and yams.

In her later travels, she encounters, among many others, a sexually open cowgirl named Bonanza Jellybean and an itinerant escapee from a Japanese internment camp happily mislabeled The Chink, who is presented as a hermetic mystic and, at one point writes on a cave wall, "I believe in everything; nothing is sacred.

A flock of whooping cranes also makes frequent appearances throughout the novel, which includes details of their physical characteristics and migratory patterns.

The novel was made into a 1993 film directed by Gus Van Sant and starring Uma Thurman, Lorraine Bracco, Pat Morita, Angie Dickinson, Keanu Reeves, John Hurt, Rain Phoenix, Ed Begley, Jr., Carol Kane, Victoria Williams, Sean Young, Crispin Glover, Roseanne Arnold, Buck Henry, and Grace Zabriskie.