Miss M., the narrator of these fictional memoirs, is a diminutive young woman with a passion for shells, fossils, flints, butterflies, and stuffed animals. Miss M. tells of her early life as a dreamy orphan and, in particular, of her tempestuous twentieth year.

In this year, she falls in love with a beautiful and ambitious full-sized woman and is courted by a male dwarf. Concluding that she must choose either to simply tolerate her difference or grow callous to it, Miss M. resolves to become independent by offering herself up as a spectacle in a circus.

This is a story of difference and acceptance, a vivid allegory offering an interior perspective on coping with diversity in a society wrought with expectation.