southern gothic

All seventeen-year-old Maggie Warshauer wants is to leave her stifled life in Filliyaw Creek behind and head to college. An outsider at school and uncertain of her own sexual identity, Maggie longs to start again somewhere new. Inspired by a long-dead biologist's journals, scientific-minded Maggie spends her days sailing, exploring, and categorizing life around her. But when her beautiful cousin Charisse disappears on prom night and is found dead at the marina where Maggie lives, Maggie's plans begin to unravel.

In an anti-other political climate comes a novel giving voice to outcasts tyrannized by power. Jacob is a boy growing up in the seventies in the Deep South who emerges from a family of sexual deviancy and alcoholism masked by religion and materialism. Aided by a tribe of mentors, he learns to define who he is but struggles to find the balance between faith and sexuality. To embrace his true identity, Jacob must go on an exodus to face his demons and overcome the pressures to conform.