Human truth and pride, pressure-cooked in modern civilization, are treated with understanding and irony in the collected works of the author, who examines the structures of civilization, from ruined buildings to bakery thrift stores, as well as social problems, including the loss of amenity and the decline of civility. She addresses homelessness, nuclear proliferation, pornography, suicide, arson, imprisonment, and exploration. The author uses her own experience as a doctor to treat the experiences of disease and death. She draws on her experiences as a social worker in drug abuse clinics. She transforms her own experiences of being poor and homeless into strange commentaries. She writes with the voices of childless cowgirls, native American dogs, and frustrated academics (in "Saturday Night/Academics in Love"). But she also writes to the experiences of mathematicians (Godel) and alchemists. She pretends to be a clairvoyant meter reader and a telephone operator handling transtemporal phone calls. She pretends to be a monster, a victim of torture, a killer, farmer, and prophet. She solves the mysteries of El Greco's lost journals and of the end of the universe.