Flock, Elizabeth

Eight-year-old Carrie Parker struggles to protect her younger sister Emma from the harsh realities of the impoverished life in North Carolina, using her imagination to create a fairytale world where they can escape from reality.

Eight-year-old Carrie Parker struggles to protect her younger sister Emma from the harsh realities of the impoverished life in North Carolina, using her imagination to create a fairytale world where they can escape from reality.

Unaware of one another's mutual discontent, a mother and daughter embark on parallel quests to escape their unhappy suburban lives, and while seventeen-year-old Cammy, convinced she was actually adopted, is drawn into a world of sex and drugs, her mother, Sam, begins an adulterous affair.

Carrie Parker, an imaginative eight-year-old, struggles to make the best of things for herself and her sister Emma after their father is murdered, and their mother marries an abusive drunk, but one particular act of cruelty pushes Carrie beyond what she can endure.