This collection begins with love and ends with death. It attempts to depict melodrama in a fresh, musical way, as the speaker moves through personal relationships and various cities: Lowell, Massachusetts; Queens; Brooklyn; Venice; Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia; Washington, DC; and finally, Acapulco and a remote beach town on the Oaxacan coast. Place is its own character here, perhaps the second-most important antagonist. The primary antagonist, of course, is the self.