Debut author Setting based on the farm that Maki's Finnish great-grandparents worked generations ago Maki Raised on this fifth-genreation Montana ranch Maki has lived a life of research in the "ghostly nature of the farm where [she] was raised and the adjacent wild lands" and her deep connection to her source material and themes is demonstrated in her vivid scenes and spellbinding language Written with the traditional plot of a hard-boiled whodunnit infused with stream-of-conscious and fragmentation, the latter of which is reminiscent of the experimentation in Justin Torres's Blackouts