Trapped on the tiny prison island where her father works as a correctional officer, Rita Mae Jones longs to escape. The precocious thirteen-year-old can't understand why her alarmingly mismatched parents chose to come to this claustrophobic place ten years before. Even less can she understand why her socially ambitious mother and her fond but ineffectual father came to be married in the first place. But there are many things Rita Mae doesn't understand about her family. A prison riot is the catalyst which kickstarts a series of shocking revelations as the Jones family's disturbing secrets come tumbling into the open - with bizarre, alarming and wholly unexpected results. 'Brims with wit and alarming surrealism. One of the most promising new writers of the 21st century' Big Issue 'A sassy, tough read which plays out like an Oscar-winning motion picture' OK 'It's a mark of the unusual talent of this young British writer that three generations of dysfunction can make for such a darkly comic read' Marie Claire