When we first meet Emma, she's married with a small daughter. Her daughter had gotten into some of her papers before her husband could prevent it. The papers were letters that Emma had written to her older sister, Ginny, who had died at age 12, before Emma was born. Explaining the letters to her husband brings the story back to a time when Emma was experiencing her father's early morning visits to her bedroom.
Sworn to silence by her father, who told her that her mother would die if she knew, Emma is on her own. Her strategy for coping with her father's sexual abuse turns to out-of-body experiences. While hovering near the ceiling to avoid her father, she finds her dead sister there.Meanwhile, the rest of Emma's life remains tough--her mother is a hard-nosed English teacher at Emma's middle school, and is critical of most people (including Emma), and Emma's father, in addition to being abusive, is an egotistic surgeon. It doesn't help that Emma's excess weight makes her feel insecure, feeling that she's always being compared not only to her peers, but to her dead sister, who was quite thin.
Emma's angst and wall-building makes it difficult for others in her life to sympathize with her, but it seems realistic for a child handling sexual abuse. I'm just not sure about the out-of-body experiences, though...
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