…So begins the life of Emily Mikulski. So begins a story of inherited lies and family secrets. Anna, Emily’s mother, alcoholic and mentally unstable, makes Emily’s life almost unbearable until Grandmother Marishka steps in. We follow Emily on her journey from the trusting five-year-old who gives her new shoes to a fortune-teller so she can speak to her dead father, to the schoolmates who bully her into stealing, to the betrayal of her first real friend Wanda, and through the pillaging effects of her mother’s illness.
Running parallel with Emily’s story are those of her Grandmother Marishka, and her Aunt Paulina. Emily first learns of Paulina’s existence when Mariskha dies when she reads an obituary purposely placed in the newspaper by Paulina. The stories of these three women are orbital, intermingling dreams and losses, drawing up fragments of their lives until the tapestry is completed.
Marishka’s spirit is the driving force that sustains Emily, a love that returns to her, again and again. It is this enormous love which eventually helps Emily to forgive. She thinks, ‘I know now that secrets run in the bones and blood of those who came before.’ She accepts the human frailties of her family, and her hard-earned passage into womanhood helps her to change the culture of her family.