Isolation

Ruth and Lucille are isolated from everyone around them. First their father's abandonment then their mother's depression and suicide set them adrift. Their grandmother takes care of them, but she is elderly and she also loses all of her loved ones. Her husband dies in the train derailment, her daughters all leave home, and Helen comes home, not to see her mother, but to drop off her children and commit suicide. Their grandmother seems distracted, as if not able to really see Ruth and Lucille.

The two aunts slated to take care of Ruth and Lucille after their grandmother's death are incapable of connecting with them on any level except pure anxiety about the girls' safety. They are also not able to make new friends in Fingerbone. They connect only with each other, and run from deeper involvement with anyone or anything else.

Sylvie takes an interest in...