Kizzy, a spirited child, lives with her family on a one-room ramshackle houseboat in Big Pearl, Arkansas. They fish, dig for mussels, look for pearls, and sell the shells to the button factory. It is a crude life made harder by the Great Depression, natural disasters, and prejudice.
At the onset of World War II, Kizzy befriends a young boy—a refugee from Nazi Germany—and a cultured young woman who encourages her to read and learn from Jane Austen’s books. Kizzy yearns for a better life, but as she comes of age, her dream of getting off the river is threatened by the evil Bully Bigshot and his Eugenics Center, a corrupt outfit that wants to rid the world of “river rats” like her through abortion and “better breeding.”
And there is Cormac, the lascivious man Kizzy calls her “make-do stepfather.” Kizzy’s struggle mimics today’s culture war. Daring, but realistic, the novel examines love, pride, compassion, courage, hope, morality, and duty—the things that inform and shape our destiny.
