In the captivating title story, our eight-year-old heroine is sent by her pregnant mother on a whirlwind jaunt to Europe with her iconoclast grandmother known even to her family as Dr. Frost and comes home to find her family completely reconfigured. In SOS,· Dr. Frost returns to haunt Ann in college, her visit colliding with a famous poet§s appearance on campus. We Know Where We Are, But Not Why· is set during a summer at the Grand Canyon and contrasts Ann§s angst-ridden yearning for a philosophical schoolmate back home to her mother§s happier pursuits of a lively Australian activist. Along the way, Ann discovers the absurdities that lurk around every corner of a young woman§s life, by way of oafish neighbors, overzealous boyfriends, prurient vegetable salesmen, and sour landlords.