Fifteen-year-old Theresa Williams has just settled under the oak tree in her front yard to read a book when she notices the boot dangling at eye-level. She knows immediately who the dead man is, hanging in the heavy foliage of the family oak tree. That is, she knows Lawrence's name, his deep unhappiness, and how he came to live with her and her mother Maxine, a woman who rages at him constantly, inexplicably. But Theresa will eventually learn the truth about Lawrence, when the turmoil that surrounds the mother and daughter explodes and Theresa leaves home to live with her brother, Nathan.Maxine's fireball personality fuels her loves as well as her hatred. Born to the circus, Maxine learns her mother's and grandmother's trade as trapeze artist, as they toss her through the air from one to the other until the finale: a fantastic spinning fall in her mother's arms onto a trampoline below—no nets. But one day, someone misses her catch, Maxine falls, and Dollie Mae disappears for days, returning as if nothing had happened, yet beginning the first in a series of disconnections that will put Maxine on a mission to make herself into someone worth admiring and Theresa on a quest for her mother's impossible love. A quiet failure at most of Maxine's schemes, Theresa hides secrets of her own, one of which may have sped Lawrence's suicide. At the heart of all the sadness are the netless gaps between each other that a family creates and defends, trusting that the concept of family will unconditionally prevent them from falling.