“Workhorse”
An unnamed first-person female narrator relates the breakdown of her marriage to a man named Zach after he went from a caring person with an agile mind to a pathetic Oxycodone addict following a ski accident. She must then contend with a needy father who has moved to Italy and complains of having no one there to connect with. As she works on an artistic project involving the construction of a large terrarium she must also deal with the increasing and intensifying demands for attention coming from her father. The situation reaches critical mass upon learning that her father has reached the point of inviting a mule into his house to live with him.
“Wife Days”
A pampered wife named Farrah in a not-exactly-perfect marriage makes a deal with her husband. She promises to give him four days a week that cater to his needs which will be called Wife Days in exchange for the other three days of the week allowing herself to cater to her desires and needs without obstruction. Her days are filled with sex with her husband or men, not her husband, an obsessive devotion to swimming laps, and meditations and contemplations about the state of her contentment. Farrah also navigates the difficult territory between her mother and her grandmother as her grandmother’s passing grows nearer.
“The Heirloom”
Regan loses her mother and gains a ranch. Knowing little about the ranching business she takes to heart business advice she learns from a BDSM dominatrix. The property is turned into a great big hole where rich men pay for the privilege of using heavy machinery to crush cars. Most of her customers are successful white-collar execs like hedge fund managers who know absolutely nothing about how to work the machinery and must depend upon her knowledge. She becomes a kind of psychic sister to her dominatrix friend, expelling the rage she feels toward them by finishing the job of destruction after the men have left.
“Inheritance”
A young woman named Hayes inherits what is a glass house built on a cliffside from her grandmother. She gets a job at a health clinic, stands naked in the rain, makes small talk with a neighbor of sorts named Dave, recalls past incidents from her life, and has a series of bizarre encounters with Charley, who may be suffering from Alzheimer’s. And all the time she keeps being warned that the glass house is certain to one day fall over the cliff on which it sits as a consequence of climate change and erosion.
“A Taste for Lionfish”
A college student Lily relates the tale of her attempts to convince the residents of Alligator, N.C. to add an invasive and predatory species known as lionfish to their diet on behalf of a conservation organization. The script prepared for her encourages her to try to sell this idea based on helping to save the planet. Lionfish are also very poisonous but are said to present no harm to humans who consume them. The reaction to a strange college student trying to convince the simple long-time residents to do something like this goes exactly as one would expect. Just before she is scheduled to leave town, Lily learns that a man who has facilitated her in the job is enacting a ritual that he has been doing almost all his life: tying himself to pier pilings and riding out a storm with his wind and water whipping his face as a way of paying penance for his family having owned slaves.
“Peaches, 1979”
Yet another young woman has inherited yet another patch of land. Darcy inherits the peach farm of her family. A terrible drought is putting that ownership in jeopardy. Darcy must deal with family issues as well, including the very real possibility that a member of her family is the serial killer who has been terrorizing the county.
“Indigo Run”
This story is a novella, easily the longest story in the book, comprising nearly half the book’s entire length. It is a formless and plotless relation of the Glass family of South Carolina that begins in the mid-1700s but primarily focuses on three female members in the middle of the 20th century. Set in an ancestral manor that has housed the family for generations, it is an example of Southern Gothic which combines the gloomy with the grotesque, including the introduction of a figure of legend known as the Night Hag. The Night Hag climbs from the river with scaly chicken legs until she finds a window to enter and settles down upon a victim’s chest until they can no longer breathe.
“The Night Hag”
The shortest story in the collection is a kind of sequel to “Indigo Run” that relates the origin story of the Night Hag. Born from a fish egg, abandoned beneath a cypress for a hundred years by a man she thought would be salvation, she tries to drown herself in the river but cannot die. The longer she lives the more grotesque her appearance becomes and the more grotesque her appearance, the more she seeks sexual gratification as a succubus who brings men their greatest suffering right at the point of their greatest pleasure.
