 JOAN MARIE PARDEE is special. Her lively intelligence combined with the emotional repression she has suffered at the hands of a psychotic mother give her a unique take on life. When, aged 28, she is freed from that repression by her mother s death, Joanie goes to live with her friend and employer, LOUIE the baker, and she finally begins to blossom. Based on Alison Dye s novel, THE SENSE OF THINGS shows us Joanie s growth to self-awareness, an emotionally redemptive trail that is sometimes tragic, but more often blackly comic.