In her memoir, Jeanette Winterson describes her life as a child, which was abusive and hard. The memoir is similar to her autobiography, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, but gives a more accurate description of her life events in a non-fictionalized fashion.
When she was half of a year old, Winterson was adopted by a Christian couple with no children - Mr. and Mrs. Winterson. At first glance, they seemed like a nice couple, adhering to Christian ideals and trying to teach their new daughter the same. However, Mrs. Winterson starts disliking Jeanette, and verbally abuses her by saying she "picked the wrong crib" at the adoption center. Paranoid that Devil has possessed her daughter, she Winterson tells her husband to hit Jeanette on numerous occasions.
Jeanette is often punished by being locked in a room or left outside on the street, and she is unable to make friends outside of the home for fear of punishment. The only ray of sunlight available to her is books, which she greatly fancies. This is, perhaps, why she was inspired to write a book of her own.
When she was fifteen years old, Jeanette fell in love with a girl from her church, named Helen. As Mr. and Mrs. Winterson are appalled at the idea of two girls falling in love with one another, Jeanette is required to have an exorcism, but it changes nothing. The next year, she falls in love with a girl classmate. This time, she is officially kicked out of the house - mind you, at age sixteen - and begins to live in her car. Eventually, she is taken in by Mrs. Ratlow, an English professor. Together, the two study, and Jeanette is eventually accepted to Oxford University.
Skipping ahead to 2007, Jeanette is now a well-known writer, but attempts suicide because of the horrible things that happened in her past. Encouraged by her partner, Susie, to find more happiness, she begins a quest to find her birthmother. After much hard work and research, she does, and the two get to know each other better.
