Joy, at the end of World War II, turns to despair for thirteen-year-old Mary Pacios when her friend, the neighborhood beauty is murdered. Mary's despair is compounded a few months later when her mother leaves. Pregnant by her high-school sweetheart, at age seventeen Mary is forced to drop out of school and marry. Five years later Mary is a divorced, single parent living in the Columbia Point Housing Project with her three children. She wends her...