'Wait. Patient. Now. Not long. Good girl. Wait here. Brave girl. Think of it as a vacation.' 'Back in a jiffy.' Big Bend, population 500, South Dakota, 1988. Eight-year-old Tiny Mite lives in a ramshackle farmhouse next to her grandfather's crashed airplane and the pine tree where she trains as a spy. Goddamn is her favourite word. Taking pictures with her camera made of aluminium foil and a tin can is her new big thing. She lives with Bee, her apocalypse-obsessed grandmother and Luvie, her hard-drinking great-aunt. And then there's her mother Velvet, beautiful and desperate, still in love with her high school boyfriend who she left to have a brief fling with Tiny Mite's absent father. One night, Tiny Mite hears a cry, but it's not what she imagines. And nothing will ever be the same. Six years later, Clea won't let anyone call her Tiny Mite anymore. Luvie has fallen in love with a pastor, and Bee's health is failing. Velvet is gone, and nobody except Bee, who can't bring herself to turn her back on her daughter, will even mention her name.Containing a wonderfully engaging and eccentric cast of characters who live long in the memory, this is the story of mothers and daughters, people bound by blood and geography, moments captured and lifetimes lost, and things never quite turning out as expected.