A man reflects on the summer of his fourteenth year, where in Baton Rouge he fell in love with a golden-haired girl across the street before an unspeakable crime shattered illusions in his seemingly idyllic neighborhood.

"Armani Curtis can think about only one thing: her tenth birthday. All her friends are coming to her party, her mama is making a big cake with blue icing and she has a good feeling about a certain wrapped box. Ten years old is a big deal to Armani. It means she's older, wiser, more responsible. But when Hurricane Katrina hits the Lower Nines of New Orleans and tears her world apart, Armani realizes that being ten means being brave, watching loved...

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.

"Just when it seems that Anna Boyd's family has finally escaped Witness Protection, the normal life she has attempted to rebuild comes crashing down"--

In a small Louisiana mill town in 1940, Jolene does not want her Momma to marry the logger who is courting her, but it seems that even her most defiantly bad behavior cannot make him go away.