With an unflinching eye, Oates charts the surprising ways in which the world we think we know can unexpectedly reveal its darker contours. From the title story, which maps the friendship between two beautiful and mysteriously doomed young women in 1940s Los Angeles - Elizabeth Short, known as the "Black Dahlia," victim of a long-unsolved and particularly brutal murder, and her roommate Norma Jeane Baker, soon to become Marilyn Monroe, to the tale of the wife of a well-to-do businessman who is ravished by, and elopes with, a lover who is a hyena - Black Dahlia & White Rose explores the commingling of sexual love and violence, the tumult of family life, and resonates with Oates' predilection for dark humor and her gift for voice.