The first person story of Gnessia Roden, American born child of Russian immigrant parents, from birth to her graduation from high school, this has little continuity but achieves a certain levity in its anecdotal incidents about Gnessia, and those around her. There's the account of the village idiot in a Russian village who thought he was a horse but became a car- and its disruptive aftermath; there's Gnessia's puppy-love affair with a boy in her class whose family thinks he is too good for her, and he decides he is too; there's an assortment of relatives and friends; an aunt who believes in evil spirits; another who if insane, is harmless; Gnessia's father who would have liked her better had she been a boy, her mother who can never quite believe that Gnessia is really her daughter, and Gnessia herself, improbably wise beyond her years... Again a family piece, deriving its quality- such as it is- from the odd, the outlandish.