The author explores her coming-of-age years and beyond in a rural town in Indiana, where, always feeling like an outsider, she experienced some of the most traumatic events of her life.

Palm grew up in an Demotte, Indiana where every year the Kankakee River flooded and returned to its old course while the residents sandbagged their homes against the rising water. From her bedroom window she watched the neighbor boy and loved him in secret, but felt escape was a continually receding hope. Now Palm finds herself drawn back, like the river, to her origins. And it means visiting the prison where the boy that she loved is serving a life sentence for a brutal murder.