Summary

With the quiet precision of Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres and the technical clarity of Mary Roach's Stiff, this is a novel about a young woman who comes most alive while working in her father's mortuary in the small, forgotten town of Petroleum. Reserved, introspective, and deeply lonely, Mary strikes up an unlikely friendship with another outsider and finally begins to consider what might happen if she dared to leave Petroleum.