"Veronica" is primarily told in flashbacks. Alison, the main character and narrator of the story, runs away from home as a teenager. She meets a man who tells her she could become a model. She does so, and is whisked away to Paris, where she becomes the lover of her agent. But she falls out of favor and returns home, almost broke, because the agent kept most of her earnings. Her family takes her in for awhile. She wonders what is happening with her sisters and parents; her mother has moved out and is living with another man. Later, Alison enrolls in community college but drops out. She goes to New York City where she becomes a proofreader for a temporary employment agency. On one of the jobs she is sent out on, she meets Veronica.
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Veronica is a middle-aged woman, who claims to have been beautiful once, much like Alison. The two women become friends, but it is more of an acquaintance thing than anything else. Veronica contracts HIV from her bisexual boyfriend, who eventually dies from the disease, and Alison tries to be there for Veronica as the illness takes its course.
The book takes place in the early 1980s, when AIDS was believed to be a gay man's disease and that women couldn't get it.
The review of this Book prepared by Keri
