"Bodies from the Sea?"

Sixteen-year-old Louella Abrahamse and her mother, Shelly, have moved into a deceased hoarder’s house, whose spirit lingers in his chaotic belongings. An oil rig accident has killed Louella’s father and the Abrahamse women are newcomers in Goodesboro, a northeastern fishing town. It is the end of the twentieth century, lobstering is booming and captains feel "like rich is a thing they can give to their children.” But employment for women is thin on the ground.

When Louella and Shelly begin to form relationships with the locals–poor, rich, young, old, and the dead but not departed hoarder–their relationship to each other is frayed thin. Worn through by the meanness of poverty in a bitter winter, the Abrahamses take on whatever work they can find. These are tiring jobs and bend the women’s days into new shapes, revealing new truths about each woman to the other. But every working body, it seems, is sculpted by money's strong current.