Life should be sweet for Frances Robinson. She has an amazing best friend, lives in a beautiful house with a loving family, and has just met a seriously cute guy named Nix, recently transplanted from Louisiana.
So why do her nightmares startle her awake? And why is she terrified of ambulances screaming in the night?
Frances has a secret. Years ago, before she was adopted by the Robinsons, she lived with her birth mother and three younger sisters in the made-up country of Fireless. Life was good there. Frances' mother, Afton, loved singing, laughing, and dancing in the rain. Most of all she loved Fireless, a beautiful and mysterious place of her own invention.
But the lure of Fireless led Frances' mother deeper and deeper into madness, until she suffocated her children, one after another, in the quiet sunshine of an ordinary morning.
All except Frances. Frances escaped.
Now Afton Jelks is out of prison. And she wants to finish what she started.