From the national bestselling author of Whistling Past the Graveyard comes a moving Southern coming-of-age novel set in 1960s Mississippi that harkens to both Ordinary Grace and The Secret Life of Bees.Tallulah James’s parents’ volatile relationship, erratic behavior, and hands-off approach to child rearing set tongues to wagging in their staid Mississippi town, complicating her already uncertain life. She takes the responsibility of shielding her family’s reputation and raising her younger twin siblings onto her youthful shoulders. If not for the emotional constants of her older brother, Griff, and her old guard Southern grandmother, she would be lost. When betrayal and death arrive hand in hand, she takes to the road, headed to what turns out to be the not-so-promised land of Southern California. But the dysfunction and childhood trauma she left behind continue to echo through her scattered family, sending her brother on a disastrous path and drawing her home again. There she uncovers the long-buried secrets and lies that set her family on the road to destruction.