Snip Freeman is a painter with a waitressing problem, a wanderer in search of her past. She'll visit a place, find a man and a studio and a scrap of a job, until the zing of uncertainty pulls her on. She is anchored nowhere, touches the earth lightly. Then she turns her back on a drowning man. And suddenly she has reason to stay put.

Taking up Shiver's theme of women in tough places, Cleave illuminates the troubled relationship between wandering and settling, belonging and freedom, parents and children, partners and lovers; between white and black, secretive silences and the truths. It is a novel of great power and lyricism.