Las Focas is a tiny place, three miles square, resting in the Pacific some way off the west coast of America. The island houses a super-maximum security facility where the Jones family, Clara, Larry and their precocious 13-year-old daughter, Rita Mae, have lived for the past ten years. All of them dream of escaping. The novel opens on 5th May, 1960: Rita Mae's 14th birthday and the morning she becomes an orphan. The explanations of how she got to this point, and the truth behind the Jones's unhappy marriage form the backdrop to this quirky, original and deliciously black second novel from a major new British talent.