This is the story of Mellie, who as a baby is found in a grotto, then raised in a souvenir shop by Rose. At age twelve Mellie goes to the dying town of O t, where she enters premature adulthood and assembles a photographic and written record of her life. Enchanting, realistic, comic, tragic--all these words describe this spellbinding novel that, like all genuine fables, takes us to a world that is utterly strange and very much our own.