Ruby has just moved into a new neighborhood. She and her husband and daughter must live with her invalid father-in-law until he dies. Ruby hates the house and hates her father-in-law. But between the letters she writes to her own mother, life goes on in the neighborhood a young mother dies in a sanitarium, a widower pulls a gun on a child; a middle-aged veteran lures young children into his house; a thirteen-year-old boy is shot; an old mother is put into a home. And Ruby has to figure out where she fits into it all. Will she find happiness and friends? Will her daughter find her own place in this world? And what will happen to all these lonely people?
