When the body of itinerant preacher and brutal drunk, Bo Bodine, is found buried in a shallow grave in the local bog, two of his five home-schooled kids are the natural suspects. Local teens want to know if it was the freak brother or the fruit who did it. But it is seventeen-year-old Junie who falls under the punitive gaze of the sheriff and the county prosecutor. Motherless and now fatherless, the Bodine kids will "go to the county" if Junie can't prove her innocence but Junie's recollection of the night in question includes only a pipe-smoking old woman, a dog named Scout and a flock of flamingos hundreds of miles from their natural habitat. Far more than a murder mystery or a coming of age novel, this is a story of love, desertion and loss, and the fragility and strength of the human spirit set in a southern Gothic locale complete with gator invested swamps, cracker cabins and cotton fields, moss hung live oaks and disturbed and disturbing characters.
