This collection of 13 stories from Hilma Wolitzer—an NPR Best Book of the Year as well as a New York Times Editors' Choice—proves her to be a clear-eyed observer of her times and yet uncannily relevant today. Most appeared in magazines like Esquire in the 1960s and 70s, providing a lens into a world often unseen at the time. In the title story, a bystander tries to soothe a woman who seems to have cracked under the pressures of her life, while several of the following stories are linked, tracing the relationship between the narrator and her husband in telling and often hilarious vignettes.