Rose McDougal lives in a decrepit apartment, an oven in the summer and an icebox in the winter. She drives an old beater, a vehicle with a seeming contempt for its occupants. She has no man in her life. In fact, she’s never had one. Making matters worse, Rose is cursed with a deep-rooted depression, the by-product of an abusive dad. Her professional life is no better.

Her quest to fill a full-time teaching position in a Nashua junior high school ends in failure. Making matters worse, she loses her gig as a sub. Jobless and on the fast track to poverty, Rose is desperate. While recovering in a hospital room, an Irish mobster named Patrick Donnelly, a dangerous man who once helped out Rose’s dad, pays her a visit. He insists on helping Rose get back on her feet. But as she soon discovers, his motives are purely self-serving.

Before long, Rose is drawn into a life of crime and constant danger involving drugs, from delivery to sales and beyond. Gone are any illusions of living a routine, 9-to-5 life in some sheltered suburb. In its place, the possibility of death lay in wait behind every door and around every corner.