The novel is set in contemporary America and is narrated by Cate, a teenage girl. Cate has been raised on-the-run by a homeless drifter called Les, who abducted her from a campsite thirteen years before. Over the years, out of a warped sense of responsibility, Les has occasionally telephoned Cate's mother, to update her on her child's progress. But as the novel opens he rings to tell the confused and grieving woman that he is finally bringing her daughter home. Cate has done something so terrible that Les has belatedly understood the moral consequences of his actions years before. But how will Cate cope with learning to love a mother she can't remember, and with learning to despise the man she has come to consider as her father? And how will her English mother square the memories of her three-year-old daughter with the hard-bitten, cynical, white-trash teenager who turns up on her doorstep? And what will happen to them both when the awful secret Cate is hiding is brought out into the open?