Tara Doucet is grieving for her grandmother, and her family is falling apart around her, but it seems like her grandmother has preplanned an elaborate itinerary for her to follow which will lead her and her sister Riley from Louisiana to a South Pacific island and into danger--and everywhere she turns butterflies follow.
Eleven-year-old tomboy Livie is sure that she is responsible for the accident that has put her mother into a coma, so, trying to make amends, she travels through the Louisiana swamps to get a spell that will make her mother well again.
A year after her mother has deserted the family, eleven-year-old Shelby goes to stay with her, deep in the Louisiana bayou, where they both confront old hurts and regrets.
