Alice James spends most of her short life in bed. Henry calls it her solution to the 'practical problem of life', and William is too busy and too far away to pay much attention. Her lifelong companion, Katharine Loring, is a constant support, but in the midst of coping with Alice's pain and frustration, the two women are faced with the shock of discovering Henry has made use of them in his fiction. Alice's witty voice rises vividly from the page as she casts an acerbic eye on the characters who populate her life and on the tensions between Katharine and Henry in this compelling fictional memoir.