"Eight-year-old Edgar Fini's loyalty is torn between the two women in his life. There's his mother, Lucy, who, though she has moments where she loves him, mostly disappears at night with her various "suitors." And then there's his grandmother, Florence, who dotes on him to the point where she is at a loss when he isn't around. Since his father's suicide, Florence and Edgar's relationship has become obsessive, each fully dependent on the other. When Florence suddenly dies, Lucy is thrown into the role of main caretaker and doesn't know how to handle her new job. But as Edgar and Lucy adjust, they must also deal with Ron, a local butcher who wants to court Lucy, and Conrad, an unsettlingly attentive adult whose intentions are at one more sinister and more innocent than Edgar could ever know. After Conrad separates Edgar from his mother, the man and the boy form a home life of two, isolated deep in the New Jersey Pine Barrens, an arrangement that is not at all one-sided, even as Lucy, their hometown, and as time goes on, a wider world hunts for the boy."--publisher's description.