This novel centers on two deaths: the early-2000s death of August’s father, and the death of her mother in the 1970s. Her father’s death is the occasion for her reflection: by the time she returns to Brooklyn to care for him, she has become an anthropologist, studying the way societies around the world cope with death and mourning. She includes anecdotes of these ritual practices throughout the text, implying that there is no one way to cope with death: it is so vast and difficult to understand that it spawns as many ways to mourn as there are ways to die.

In a sense, then, August’s way of mourning her father is to think back to her mother’s earlier death and the way she coped with it. As a young girl transplanted from Tennessee to Brooklyn, her main mechanism was denial. Although she knew her mother had gone somewhat mad, talking to the ghost of her deceased brother, Clyde, and refusing to believe he had died, she “forgets” her mother’s death. She persists for years in telling her younger brother that her mother will come tomorrow. Even though her mother’s ashes sit in the living room, she cannot acknowledge their reality.