Sixteen-year-old Elektra Kamenides is well on her way to becoming a proper southern belle in the small Mississippi college town she calls home. That is, until her mother decides to uproot her and her kid sister Thalia and start over in California. They leave behind Elektra's father--a professor and leading expert on Greek mythology, and Elektra can't understand why. For her, life is tragedy, and all signs point to her family being cursed.

Their journey ends in Guadalupe Slough, a community of old Chicano families and oddball drifters sandwiched between San Jose and the southern shores of San Francisco Bay. The houseboat that her mother has bought, sight unseen, is really just an ancient trailer parked on a barge and sunk into a mudflat.

What would Odysseus do? Elektra asks herself. Determined to get back to Mississippi at all costs, she'll beg, cheat, and steal to get there. But things are not always what they seem, and home is wherever you decide to make it.