In this collection, April De Angelis has created four plays that are sometimes wrenching, occasionally scathing, often hilarious, and frequently political without being polemical. Focusing most often on women, the plays have disparate settings: an ironworks in the mid-nineteenth century, a beach house haunted by a suicide in the family, backstage in a Shakespearean theater where actresses are preparing to perform some of the first stage roles for women, and the office of a social worker who provides group therapy to three women, each struggling in her own way with her life.