Big Bend, population 500, South Dakota, 1988: Eight-year-old Tiny Mite lives in a ramshackle farmhouse next to her grandfather's crashed airplane and the pine tree where she trains as a spy. Goddamn is her favorite word. Taking pictures with her camera made of aluminum foil and a tin can is her new big thing. She lives with Bee, her apocalypse-obsessed grandmother, and Luvie, her hard-drinking great-aunt. And then there's her mother, Velvet, beautiful and desperate, still in love with her high school boyfriend who she left to have a brief fling with Tiny Mite's absent father. One night, Tiny Mite hears a cry, but it's not what she imagines. And nothing will ever be the same.