The protagonist of the novel, Camille is a thirty-year-old journalist living in Chicago. However, after a brief stay in a psychiatric hospital, she finds herself back in her hometown of Wind Gap, Missouri, facing the ghosts of her past. At age thirteen, after her sister’s untimely death, she began cutting words into her skin and was sexually abused by older boys. While there is a strong link between her sexual abuse and the cutting, it’s also clear that her strained relationship with her mother played a distinct role in her self-harm.

While in Wind Gap, Camille drinks excessively, uses illegal drugs, and is poisoned by her mother. She also has a sexual affair with a detective on the murder case, as well as one of the suspects—acts that reflect her desire to please men to the extent of being self-sacrificial. Camille also constantly compares herself to her younger half-sister, Amma. She focuses intensely on Amma’s smooth, youthful skin, her ability to get what she wants, and her relationship to their mother. In this way, Camille seems to be infatuated with Amma, in the sense that Amma represents what Camille could have been, had she been her mother’s favorite.