BettyJoyce Nash (MSJ88)

On Boneyard Island, Georgia, where everyone’s weirdly kin, thirteen-year-old Lucille is marooned when her mother goes AWOL with an old flame, leaving Lucille with only her father’s ashes, two half-siblings, and Will, the misanthropic manager of the island’s only motel. The abandonment kills hope of Lucille’s promised snorkeling trip to the Florida Reef before ocean heat kills the coral, and illusions she’s harbored about her mother’s sanity. Everybody Here is Kin explores the lives of this sinking family, the island community, and fears of exposing wounds, old and new, when natural disaster forces them to trust, and depend on, strangers.