But today I dream of falling...into the crowd of God-struck people. The pale leaves of their faces tilt up and their white limbs rise to catch me as I am passed among the river of their hands, one to another, am kept by them, am kept.

-- from Walking on Air

It is the Depression in America, 1931. Twelve-year-old June is a tightrope walker. Performing in her preacher father's revival shows, June travels through cities, makeshift camps, carnivals, and freak shows. The family has no home, no money, no friends -- and faith that is getting thinner than the air upon which June walks....

Liberty Aimes has spent all of her ten years captive in her parents' crooked old house on Gooch Street. Her spry father, Mal Aimes, is a crook who sells insurance, while her overweight mother sits at home in front of the TV, demanding that Liberty cook nonstop, everything from fried clams and fried hot dogs to ice cream sundaes. Liberty's only knowledge of the outside world comes from the secret stash of children's books and fairy tales she discovered beneath the floorboards.
One day, Liberty works up the courage to enter her father's forbidden basement laboratory. There she discovers a...