Mattie Gokey has a word for everything. She collects words, stores them up as a way of fending off the hard truths of her life, the truths that she cant write down in stories. The fresh pain of her mothers death. The burden of raising her sisters while her father struggles over his brokeback farm. The mad welter of feelings Mattie has for handsome but dull Royal Loomis, w Mattie Gokey has a word for everything. She collects words, stores them up as a way of fending off the hard truths of her life, the truths that she cant write down in stories. The fresh pain of her mothers death. The burden of raising her sisters while her father struggles over his brokeback farm. The mad welter of feelings Mattie has for handsome but dull Royal Loomis, who says he wants to marry her. And the secret dreams that keep her going--visions of finishing high school, going to college in New York City, becoming a writer. Yet when the drowned body of a young woman turns up at the hotel where Mattie works, all her words are useless. But in the dead womans letters, Mattie again finds her voice, and a determination to live her own life. Set in 1906 against the backdrop of the murder that inspired Theodore Dreisers An American Tragedy, this coming-of-age novel effortlessly weaves romance, history, and a murder mystery into something moving, and real, and wholly original.