Growing up in a funeral home with unconventional parents, Trey Burnes faces his traumatic past while confined in a psychiatric ward at 17. As he navigates memories that include a possible suicide attempt, he reflects on a childhood marked by both fear and moments of love. Trey's journey is one of grappling with his experiences and contemplating his future as he seeks to reconcile his troubled history with the hope of reentering the world.
Oliver Curtin grows up in a nocturnal world with a mother who is a sex worker and drug addict, and whose love is real yet increasingly unreliable. His narration alternates between that troubled childhood and the present of the novel, where he is serving the last months of a thirty-years-to-life sentence in a maximum-security prison in upstate New York, for a crime he committed at age seventeen. His redemption is closely allied with his memories, seen with growing clarity and courage. If he can remember, then life in the larger world is possible for him.