Percy Joyce is afflicted from birth with a congenital disfigurement but a regular boy on the cusp of teenage-hood, filled with yearning, wild with hormones, longing for what he can't have, for wanting to be let in...and let out; and his disturbingly alluring mother, Penelope, whose sex appeal fairly leaps off the page. Every man in St. John's lusts after her, including her sister-in-law Medina, her paying border, Pops MacDougall, with whom she carries on an affair of convenience - and Percy.