Content Warning: This section of the guide includes descriptions of anti-gay bias, racism, ableism, misogyny, kidnapping, imprisonment, rape, sexual abuse, physical abuse, psychological abuse, and suicide. The illegal incineration of a corpse is also described.

Sally Diamond is the titular main character of the novel. She is characterized as “strange” because of her antisocial behavior and her self-isolation. The novel begins with Sally attempting to incinerate the body of her recently deceased father, Thomas, who adopted her when she was seven. She does this because she innocently mistook his flippant remarks about taking his body out with the trash to mean that he didn’t want a funeral and literally wanted his body to be thrown into the trash incinerator. When this act is discovered, Sally becomes national news. She is ultimately cleared of criminal wrongdoing because the news media also uncovers the dark truths about her long-hidden past.

As she delves more deeply into her background via her father’s letters, Sally discovers the reasons why she can’t remember anything before her adoption at the age of seven. Sally was adopted when her birth mother, Denise, died by suicide after she had been rescued from years of abduction, rape, and imprisonment. Now, Sally works on coming to terms with this mother she never knew and finally confronts the repressed reasons for her anti-social and odd behavior.