Twelve short stories, set in different periods in London, New York, and Hollywood, including: A single mother struggles to make her beautiful daughter a Hollywood success In the middle of a terrible war, a child finds peace and hope At her first dance, a teenager experiences shocking racial bigotry An adoptee seeking her birth mother finds an encounter with murder A career woman discovers that an affair with a married man has dire and unanticipated consequences An unmarried woman finally grasps the tragedy of her parents' shattered lives