Set against the backdrop of the Korean War in the 1950s, a novel about family, the repercussions of war, and the bonds that sustain personal relationships focuses on a single family--Lark, her brother Termite, their mother Lola, and Termite's soldier father, Robert Leavitt.

In 1874, in the wake of the Civil War, eleven-year-old ConaLee and her mother arrive at the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in West Virginia. They're delivered to the hospital's entrance by Papa--an abusive veteran who forces himself into their lives--after ConaLee's mother, who hasn't spoken in a year, grows even more withdrawn. Before he departs, Papa assigns them new identities and demands that ConaLee introduce herself as her mother's nurse--not...