The novel was partially inspired by Gaitskill's own experience hosting a child with the charity Fresh Air Fund and Enid Bagnold's 1935 novel National Velvet.

The childless couple decides to host an eleven-year-old Dominican girl from Crown Heights, Brooklyn, Velveteen "Velvet" Vargas.

Gaitskill wrote in a 2009 essay titled "Lost Cat" about her experience with the charity Fresh Air Fund, whereby Caesar, a six-year-old boy from the Dominican Republic, came to live with her and her then-husband Peter Trachtenberg in upstate New York.

The essay, published in Granta, discusses her experience with Caesar, his sister Natalia, and her emotions about the disappearance of her cat and the death of her father.

[11] In a review by The New Yorker, Alexandra Schwartz describes Gaitskill as a writer "actively engaged in deep, witchy communion with the perverse", but the novel is ultimately optimistic.

[9] Joanna Walsh in the Los Angeles Review of Books focuses on the use of words and names in the novel and the parallels drawn between women and horses.