In the fictional
village of Rocky Point, Cape Breton, the Briar family keeps a secret.
Locked in his room Joseph Briar, a child with visible and non-visible
disabilities, is hidden from the community. And what Alfie Johns discovers
through Joseph’s window will lead him to a deep engagement with the Briar
family, his love for the beautiful and self-destructive Anntell Briar, and a
future framing life in photographs. With her trademark hypnotic prose weaving through
the emotional lives of her characters, Beatrice MacNeil intimately reveals the
destructive power of shame and the redemptive power of love.