Alta Corral is a young woman confident, even nonchalant, about her sexual conquests of other women. She works as a body piercer at a full-service tattoo parlor, rides a motorcycle, & has slept with every girl in San Francisco who is so inclined. But none can replace Sasha ShyÓ Mallon, the next-door neighbor from her girlhood. As teenagers, they discovered themselves together; then Shy fled to Seattle & entered a relationship with a man. Now Shy has returned, pregnant, to be at her dying mother's bedside. Alta joins her there; & soon they are tending toward intimacy again, in a way that shakes up their notions of who they are, as well as opening up the secrets of their mothers' lives.