Elliot Hase is a sharp, observant nine year old girl growing up on a horse farm in 1980s North Carolina, where the adults are far less stable than the barn animals. Her mother, a charismatic alcoholic with a flair for drama and denial, careens through life in a haze of wine and self-pity. Her father, a distant doctor with a new family and a wife who rewrites history, offers more guilt than guidance. Caught between the two is Poppy—Elliot’s older sister, partner-in-crime, and cautionary tale—whose battles with addiction and self-destruction echo through Elliot’s own attempts to break the cycle.

As Elliot navigates funerals, failed interventions, AA and Al Anon meetings and an elite boarding school that teaches more about co-dependency than calculus, she slowly begins to question not just the people raising her, but the identity she’s been forced to adopt to survive them. Her coming-of-age is shaped by secrets she didn’t ask for, betrayals she doesn’t deserve, and moments of brutal clarity that land like aftershocks.