Welcome to the comical, ironical, and multiple worlds of one Violet Pansy Proudlock (a ventriloquist), who is also known as Alice Thumb (a gossip and secret sharer of limited imaginings) and, at other times, as Mavis Furness Barnwell Halleton (a writer twice married). Through it all, Violet-Alice-Mavis chooses to be the entertainer, to make us laugh and cry, to be the ventriloquist who dares to enter the speech of others and expose them.