The choices people make. Her stories inhabit the spaces between the darkness and the public street. In these stories, Shields' warmth is ever present. There is no physical violence or crime and only one accident. There is a little guilt but a total rejection of shame.
Women work and cook and shop and meet for lunch and attend dinner parties.
Some of them raise children alone. Some of them contemplate suicide but choose life. Shield's wit also permeates this collection. There is also humor in irony. A queen withdraws, retires from life, allergic to time, or sequence, or narrative, with its implied ending.