You might ask how a woman like Isabel Flood first insinuated herself into a family like ours. Complicated as she was, her method was straightforward - she slipped in through one of those holes that can develop in families - 'waltzed in through my flaws', my mother would later reconstruct.Little Penny knows that her mother Marguerite drinks too much and has a flair for melodrama that does not go down too well in upstate New York. But to Penny she also has a sense of fun that makes everything in life feel the way it should. So when Marguerite goes south that summer of 1977 to 'dry out' in a Louisiana convent, Penny is alarmed to be left in the care of a high-minded Evangelical lady called Isabel Flood. With wit, humanity and a bracing undercurrent of suspense, Paula Sharp captures a family embattled - and rightly wary of who wants to recruit God on to their side.