The ten stories collected in O Street revolve around the life of young professional Elizabeth Dinard, who has escaped an impoverished and abusive childhood in New Jersey but still suffers its effects in adulthood.

[1][2] Michael Upchurch of The Seattle Times wrote that the book recognizes "how even the most toxic family connections have some kind of love threaded through them", and notes that "its heroine, even in the worst circumstances, keeps fierce hold of her dignity".

[3]Citing author Cris Mazza as her creative muse and mentor, Wycoff noted, "she helped me see that the disparate single-mother stories I'd written could be linked.

[2] Three of the stories have been published previously: "Afterbirth" (in New Letters),[5][6] "The Shell Game" (in Coal City Review),[7] and "O Street" (in Other Voices magazine).

[10] David Bradley praised the book: O Street makes you think of great writers in strange combinations: Dreiser and Welty; Wright[clarification needed] and McCullers; Joan Didion and Stephen Crane.

[11]Describing the collection as "White Oleander blown into A Million Little Pieces", Cris Mazza wrote, "Stripped of sentimentality and sanguinity, Corrina Wycoff 's O Street is a relentless stare into the dark yawn of brutality.

"[11] Alex Shakar praised it as "deeply moving, deftly told, and keenly insightful",[12] and Aimee Liu called it "a harrowing portrait of familial pain, mental illness, and the sometimes cruel tenacity of love".

[12][13] Comparing O Street to the work of Dorothy Allison "for its depictions of poor women and lesbian relationships", Gretchen Kalwinsky wrote for Time Out Chicago: Wycoff portrays the gritty, sorrowful elements of her characters' lives head-on and offers no easy solutions—no one's riding up on a white horse, but neither are the stories bleak.