Hildy returns home to discover that her stepmother has abandoned her and taken her brother and four sisters. She refuses to stay with her backwoods grandmother and runs away with her cousin Ruby in hopes of finding her family.
Treated like an outsider by Ozark Mountain neighbors who regard her mother's disappearance years earlier with suspicion, sixteen-year-old Lucy is further haunted by a friend's murder, which compels her to investigate family secrets and sacrifices.
Contains selections from a quarterly magazine called Bittersweet published by high school students to discover and preserve the lore of the Ozarks of Missouri and Arkansas.
