Educator Patti Lather and psychologist Chris Smithies observed and chronicled support groups for women diagnosed with HIV. Whether black or Latina, poor or middle class, the women in these groups share the common bond of living with AIDS, and they describe how it affects their lives in terms full of practical reality and moving poignancy, including feelings of blame, regret, fear, death, and life.

The authors weave into these accounts their own experiences as detached observers, but also as women emotionally tied to the sufferings of sisters, mothers, wives, and lovers with AIDS.

The reader is provided with statistics and fact boxes that put these women's words in context for a fuller understanding of the epidemic of AIDS as it affects its fastest growing population. In addition, in an epilogue, Lather and Smithies revisit these women in 1995 and 1996, not only to once again chronicle their continuing struggle with AIDS, but to visit the friends they had made and to mourn the friends they have lost.