Maria Wyeth leaves her small Nevada hometown at 18 to pursue an acting career in New York.

Director Carter Lang casts Maria in his film Angel Beach, launching both their careers in Hollywood.

After Maria's mother dies in a car accident, Maria marries Carter and moves to Beverly Hills.

Carter institutionalizes his and Maria's daughter Kate in a medical facility due to Kate's neurological condition.

After Carter moves out of their home, Maria copes with loneliness by driving the Los Angeles freeways alone.

At a Hollywood party, Maria realizes she has gone 51 days without her period and is pregnant.

Carter tells Maria he will take custody of Kate if she refuses to have an abortion.

A doctor performs an illegal abortion on Maria at a motel in Encino with minimal anesthetic.

Maria suffers severe bleeding after the abortion and discovers she has passed a piece of the placenta.

Maria divorces Carter on charges of mental cruelty; Helene testifies in court that Carter struck and humiliated Maria.

Maria takes an actor's Ferrari after he pressures her into sex; police pull her over near Las Vegas.

Ivan Costello breaks into Maria's home and rapes her after she refuses to sleep with him.

After Les Goodwin fails to help her, Maria drives out to the desert where Carter is filming.

Maria holds BZ's hand as he takes a fatal overdose of sleeping pills beside her.

Maria is living in the UCLA Neuropsychiatric ward in the aftermath of BZ's death.

Maria Wyeth, a former actress living in Beverly Hills, drifts through a loveless marriage to director Carter Lang, who controls her through their institutionalized daughter Kate. When Maria becomes pregnant with her lover's child, Carter forces her to have an illegal abortion by threatening to take Kate away, a procedure that causes lasting physical and psychological trauma. Maria endures months of deteriorating health and rising despair, eventually divorcing Carter on abuse charges while falling into increasingly reckless behavior. Her downward spiral accelerates when her ex-boyfriend Ivan rapes her and her lover Les Goodwin refuses to help, leaving her no choice but to drive out to the desert where Carter is filming. There, she witnesses the death of her closest friend BZ, who overdoses on sleeping pills as Maria holds his hand. The novel ends with Maria institutionalized at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric ward, where she finds an unexpected and hard-won peace.

Maria's core journey from actress to survivor.

Carter uses footage he secretly shot of Maria in vulnerable moments to create a second film without her consent.

Maria goes to her agent Freddy's office but cannot get a meeting and goes home to lie on Kate's empty bed.

BZ visits Maria at her pool and mentions an actress who recently slit her wrists and was admitted to UCLA Neuropsychiatry.

Freddy tells Maria on the phone that she has been unable to get work since walking off her last film set.

BZ persuades Maria to attend a Hollywood party, where she refuses to socialize with the well-connected gangster Larry Kulik.

Maria reveals her pregnancy to Carter mid-conversation; he directs his anger at Maria rather than at Les Goodwin.

Maria tries to make small talk with Helene and Carlotta while unable to stop thinking about her upcoming abortion.

Maria calls from a payphone to finalize her abortion appointment and Les Goodwin's wife Felicia answers instead.

Maria visits Kate's medical facility unannounced; Kate clings to a nurse and does not look at her mother.

Maria meets Les for dinner the night of her abortion, orders a large steak, and does not tell him what happened.

Maria moves out of the Beverly Hills house and into a small furnished apartment.

Maria spends Christmas with Kate, but the evening ends badly when Kate smashes a doll against a mirror.

Maria tries to reach Benny Austin from the Sands casino in Las Vegas, but his phone number is disconnected.

Maria wanders Las Vegas aimlessly until Freddy finds her at a hotel; she is denied entry and drives home alone.

BZ tells Maria that Carter is sleeping with Helene; when BZ asks what matters, Maria answers 'nothing.'

As Maria's marriage to Carter deteriorates, she navigates a hollow Hollywood social world populated by parties, agents, and superficial friendships. Her secret pregnancy and the illegal abortion she undergoes consume her emotionally, even as she tries to maintain a façade of normalcy with friends like Helene and her married lover Les Goodwin. In the aftermath of the abortion, Maria struggles to maintain a connection to her daughter Kate, whose medical facility visits grow more painful and strained. A complete emotional collapse leads Maria to reckless behavior in Las Vegas, where she fails to reconnect with the godfather figure from her childhood past. By the time Maria arrives in the desert for Carter's film shoot, BZ—her only true kindred spirit—signals his growing nihilism in a devastating conversation, and the affair between Carter and Helene is finally confirmed, leaving Maria entirely alone.

The social world that closes in around Maria.

Harry Wyeth urges Maria to return to New York to pursue acting, saying she cannot win if she is not at the table.

On a visit back to Silver Wells, Maria notices for the first time that her mother has fallen into a deep depression.

Carter returns to the Beverly Hills home unexpectedly and gaslights Maria about who first initiated their separation.

Carter reveals he has been monitoring Maria's visits to Kate and says the hospital staff believes her visits harm Kate.

Maria wakes up the morning before her abortion crying for her mother for the first time since her mother's death.

Maria dreams she has already had the baby and is living with ex-boyfriend Ivan Costello in New York.

Maria's final image of her parents, as she boards the plane back to New York, is of them waving at the wrong window.

Maria contacts a hypnotist in an attempt to confront and process the trauma of her abortion.

Maria realizes she has unconsciously been counting down to the baby's due date on the day she is offered a lesser film role.

Maria tells the hypnotist she cannot follow his suggestions and decides to quit treatment entirely.

Maria unexpectedly runs into her godfather Benny Austin at the Las Vegas Flamingo and flees when he orders their old family drink.

Carter visits Maria at BZ and Helene's house and tells her she looks like she weighs only 82 pounds.

A coffee shop owner in a Death Valley town asks Maria if she has ever made a decision; Maria says no.

BZ tells Helene he wants 'exactly nothing,' and Maria understands the full weight of what he means.

Maria describes the peace of her life in the Neuropsychiatric ward and directly addresses the reader for the first time.

Maria's story is shaped by a series of pivotal emotional turning points, beginning with her father's insistence that she return to New York and pursue acting, and continuing through her recognition of her mother's quiet depression on a visit home. Carter's gaslighting and surveillance—most clearly revealed in his tracking of Maria's hospital visits to Kate—establish the pattern of control that dominates her adult life. The illegal abortion becomes the novel's central trauma, and Maria's failed attempt at hypnotherapy shows how deep her psychological wounds have grown. As Maria reaches her lowest point in Las Vegas, a chance encounter with her godfather Benny forces her to confront the irretrievable innocence of her past. In the desert, she arrives at the honest admission that she has never truly made a decision, and BZ's quiet declaration that he wants 'exactly nothing' signals the irreversible turn toward the novel's devastating conclusion.