Claudia came to New York City fresh out college, bouyed along by her dream of becoming a journalist. But her starry-eyed notion of Claudia Steiner, Reporter on the Beat, quickly vanished into the ozone when she couldn't muster the requisite hard-bitten, white-hot urgency, the chain-smoking, the yelling, and the cutthroat story-mongering. Now at the age of twenty-nine she finds herself adrift in the city, careening dangerously from catastrophe to catastrophe. Desperately trying to keep her head above water, Claudia is aided only by her wry sense of humor, a keen appreciation of the medicinal properties of tequila, and something more subtle -- a persistent little flame of belief in herself that makes a happy ending seem possible even in this most unforgiving of cities.