It's summer in Kentucky. The low ceiling of August is pressing down on the religious town of East Winder, and on thirteen-year-old Charmaine Peake who can't shake the feeling that she's being tested. She and her mother get along better with a room between them, but circumstances have forced them to relocate to a tiny trailer by the river. The last in a line of local holy men, Charmaine's father has turned from prophet to patient, his revelation lost in the clarifying haze of medication. Her sure-minded grandmother has suffered a stroke. And at church, where she has always felt most certain, Charmaine discovers that her archrival, a sanctimonious missionary kid, carries a dark, confusing secret. Suddenly Charmaine's life can be sorted into what she wishes she knew and what she wishes she didn't

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