In a beleaguered city where rats and roving gangs terrorize the streets， where government has broken down and meaningless violence holds sway， a woman -- middle-aged and middle-class -- is brought a twelve-year-old girl and told that it is her responsibility to raise the child. This book， which the author has called "an attempt at autobiography，" is that woman s journal -- a glimpse of a future only slightly more horrendous than our present， and of the forces that alone can save us from total destruction.