Paper Dolls is the memoir of a girl who becomes a young woman in a passionate search for an enduring friendship. Deprived of her older sister, Tess Vanderveer, by the neediness of an Irish ghetto girl, Dove Delaney, Gwen also loses the friendship of Millie Dietz, the beautiful daughter of the family cook and housekeeper, Gladys. Gwen's mother takes Millie away to the high society of New York City in the 1930s and 1940s.