After a summer flood, Kerrigan discovers a boy's body caught in a fence line. She tells no one. Night after night she returns: first to watch, then to touch, then to claim; until she takes a tooth as proof that he is hers. As the town searches and questions mount, her secret devotion twists into something feral, forcing her to choose between keeping him and giving him back.

Puryear is a haunting story about girlhood, obsession, and the hunger to hold on to what the world is trying to wash away.