Growing up to find and take one's place in society is always a matter of importance, especially for those whose place is unconventional or marginal. In Five Minutes in Heaven, the young woman protagonist, Jude, follows the trail of her identity from her home in Kentucky's Smoky Mountains to New York City and then to Paris, searching for love, work, and selfhood. As a bisexual woman, Jude is accompanied by both friends and lovers, including her childhood friends Molly and Sandy, her older married lover Anna, and the enigmatic Parisians she finds at the furthest reaches of her journey.

Although Jude's own lesbianism is reserved and apolitical, as befits her character, her journey leads her to a communal house in New York City, where she is reunited with not only her childhood friend Sandy, who also becomes a lover, and meets his friend/ lover Simon, and...