Infused with gentle optimism, eleven uncompromising stories explore, each in its own way, the nature of sacrifice.

Mum and Nan struggle to contrive a sense of normal family life in the emotionally charged environment of a women's shelter. A visual artist faces the return of her wayward daughter, who brings home her new boyfriend, the lumbering behemoth, Zol. A bereaved woman lies restless and alone in bed, her thoughts troubled by the plaintive cries of the dog locked in next-door's laundry.

At once dark, poignant and witty, Isobel Blackthorn's first collection of short stories depicts intimately and honestly the travails and heroic responses of women and men confronting the pith of their lives.