An emotionally fragile woman, recently released from a mental hospital for self mutilation, goes to school to gain secretarial skills to gain employment. She has an alcoholic father and a co-dependent mother who are clueless as to who she really is, which is a tormented soul who really wants to find something with which she can find success. She is a great secretary and finds a job with a unique, old fashioned, but off-center, in-charge boss with a somewhat sadistic sexual proclivity. She grows and evolves and so does he.