Nikki Black was determined to kill her mother for abandoning her to a series of foster homes and intermittent madness. The story told through Nikki's disjointed, angry, and eventually hopeful narrative draws you into her sometimes frightening view of the world. But what you're also left with is a sense of the gray mysticism that surrounds the island where her mother lives, and the magical tales woven from the detritus of the island that her complicated, child-like younger brother, whom she never knew existed, tells her.
