It was published by Avon on December 1, 1997 and was selected for the Oprah Winfrey Book Club in 1998 and was a New York Times Best Seller for nine straight weeks.

The novel depicts the life of a young African-American woman named Ava Johnson in the following months after being diagnosed with HIV; in addition to the realities of living with a retrovirus, Cleage's work addresses issues involving race, sexuality, gender, class, and ability in American society.

[3] Ava Johnson, a young black woman living in Atlanta, is diagnosed with HIV which she contracted from an unknown source through sexual intercourse.

Upon her HIV-positive diagnosis, she is alienated by her community in Atlanta and loses her clients at her hair salon on the basis of people's fear of the virus and their association of it with AIDS.

Ava decides to move to Idlewild, Michigan, her hometown, to live with her widowed sister Joyce before fulfilling her dream to start a new life in San Francisco, California.

After witnessing the fight and dropping the woman and the baby back off at their house, Eddie reveals to Ava that there is a budding crack problem within Idlewild.

[4][3] Come July, Joyce is met with the news from Gerry Anderson that the Sewing Circus is not allowed to meet at the Church anymore because it does not align with their conservative values.

The state's decision to discontinue funding resulted from a letter Gerry Anderson sent the government with false information about the Sewing Circus.

[1] He has further noted that it could be seen as a self-help book as it depicts Ava steadily making positive life changes in her diet, exercise, spiritual presence, and substance use.

[2] In a feature in "Voice from the Gaps" at University of Minnesota, Cleage's work is praised for depicting an alternative representation of motherhood and the struggles that come along with it.

[1] Aubrey compares the representation of Ava's newfound happiness in life to the ideology of magazines like Cosmopolitan and Glamour which assert that people's lives will drastically improve once they start performing "anti-stress" activities.

Aubrey Bryan argues that the portrayal of Eddie Jefferson as a near perfect individual lends the novel to be more instructional rather than realistic with multi-dimensional characters.

[1] Timothy Lyle critiques the novel's reliance on responding to adverse life situations with the response of heteronormative practices, "gender compliance," and "able-bodied productivity.

[2] The novel closely associates rehabilitation with the idea of "coming-home" to one's place of origin in order to find love, community, and purpose amidst a threatening life situation.

Lyle attributes the success of the novel to Cleage's depiction of a heterosexual African-American with HIV into a pleasurable narrative in which Ava's "threatening" diagnosis is ultimately accepted back into able-bodied heteronormativity.