Shayla lives with her mother and her teenage sister, Tia, in a rough area of Houston. Shayla makes friends with a strange girl who has moved in next door. Kambia is always making up crazy stories, including one about being attacked by the wallpaper wolves that come out of the bedroom walls and maul her at night.

As their friendship grows, Shayla begins to realise that Kambia's tales are not make-believe, but are about the horrors that she faces at home. Torn between misguided loyalty and harrowing truth, Shayla is forced to make an awful choice. In doing so, she surrenders her childhood innocence, an innocence that Kambia Elaine has never been allowed to have.

'With words that often read more like poetry than prose . . . Williams creates a complex coming-of-age story that packs an emotional wallop . . . While this is intense material, Williams handles it sensitively; she is a writer to watch.' Publishers Weekly.