Trapped on the tiny prison island where her father works as a correctional officer, 13-year-old Rita Mae Jones longs to escape. Rita Mae cannot understand why her alarmingly mismatched parents chose to come to this claustrophobic, brooding place ten years before. Even less can she understand why her emotionally repressed, socially ambitious mother and her fond but ineffectual father came to be married in the first place. But there are many things Rita Mae doesn't understand about her family. A prison riot is the catalyst which kickstarts a series of shocking revelations as the Jones family's disturbing secrets come tumbling into the open - with bizarre, alarming and wholly unexpected results.
