Sick of living respectably with her grandmother, Anita Carbone hops a downtown train. She finds Greenwich Village—the Village of Kerouac and Dylan, but also of Joe and Shank, two small-time dope peddlers more than happy to welcome a square into their midst. But after a few weeks in Joe’s bed, she finds that with sex, drugs, and grime come danger, and that it’s harder to get back uptown than it was to come down.