Nomi describes her life in East Village, living with her father Ray after her mother and sister both left home.

Nomi meets Travis at a New Year's Eve party at Suicide Hill, where he kisses her as she passes out bleeding.

Nomi confronts a hospital nurse over neglectful care of her bedridden friend Lydia and is thrown out for throwing apple juice.

Travis pressures Nomi to get on birth control, and she visits a doctor and obtains a prescription.

Memory recalled: Tash leaves East Village with her boyfriend Ian after Nomi's 13th birthday, with Trudie's quiet blessing.

Ray takes Nomi to the town dump at night, where she discovers he has been secretly reorganizing others' discarded belongings.

A bullet hole appears in the Nickel family's front window, and a police officer arrives to investigate.

Nomi and Ray attend the demolition derby together and drive around afterward, neither wanting to go home.

Nomi shaves her head and goes to school, where Mr. Quiring throws her out over her appearance and missing homework.

Nomi and Travis have sex for the first time at his parents' cabin, which Nomi describes as going poorly.

Nomi spots Travis's truck outside the Kryo Motor Inn and sets it on fire.

Nomi goes to the hospital to visit Lydia and learns she has been sent to Eden mental institute for shock therapy.

Ray finds Nomi getting high alone in a blue field near the dump and sits with her over coffee.

The Mouth arrives at the Nickel home and formally tells Nomi she has been excommunicated from the Mennonite community.

Ray leaves East Village, leaving Nomi the car, their belongings, and a note with Bible verses expressing his hope for her.

The novel follows Nomi Nickel, a teenager in the Mennonite town of East Village, as she navigates life with her stoic father Ray after her mother Trudie and sister Tash both disappeared years ago. Nomi meets her boyfriend Travis at a New Year's party and develops an ambivalent relationship with him, even as she struggles with school, faith, and a bleak future at the chicken processing plant. She grows increasingly reckless, eventually losing her virginity to Travis and then discovering he has been unfaithful to her. In a moment of rage she sets his truck on fire and spirals into a night of destructive choices before Ray quietly finds her in a field. The community's leader, The Mouth, arrives the next morning to formally excommunicate her from the church. In a final act of painful love, Ray leaves East Village permanently, freeing Nomi from the obligation of staying behind for his sake.

The headline events of Nomi's final year in East Village.

Trudie refuses to join the crowd greeting the Queen's visit and watches the spectacle from a rooftop instead.

Nomi encounters her neighbor Sheridan Klippenstein at the local pits and learns his father was excommunicated and his mother died by suicide.

Nomi and Travis visit her late grandmother's old barn searching for a Mennonite dress Nomi once saw floating in the wind, but it is gone.

Nomi visits the kindly Mrs. Peters, who sees Nomi as a reflection of her drowned son, and finds she cannot say goodbye.

Ray gives Nomi a piece of chalk, and she uses it to write a Gauguin quote about revenge in the driveway.

Memory recalled: Trudie is removed from her church crying-room role for playing radio during service and reassigned to lead hymns at Rest Haven.

Memory recalled: Mr. Quiring visits the Nickel home to discuss Tash's academic troubles, and Nomi notices his nervous behavior around Trudie.

Travis and Nomi trade a rolled-up carpet to the Golden Comb for drugs; the Golden Comb then kisses Nomi without her consent.

Nomi stops to comfort Doft, a young boy struck by a workman after throwing rocks at an abattoir construction site.

Nomi accompanies Ray to a clothing store to buy a new suit and then gives him the decorative dipping bird she bought.

For Ray's birthday, Nomi cooks dinner and bakes a special cake, and the two of them watch a baseball game outside together.

Nomi wakes up in the Golden Comb's trailer and realizes her old family couch is there, sold to him by Ray overnight.

Travis and Nomi give each other haircuts during a late-night session of drinking and wandering through town.

Ray brings home Edwina McGallivray, a disoriented music judge who reveals she knew Trudie as a performer at a local playhouse.

Nomi passes her driving test after Ray quietly rescheduled it when she missed her original appointment.

Away from the main plot events, the novel is rich with smaller scenes that reveal the texture of life in East Village and the bonds Nomi shares with those around her. Childhood memories of Trudie's quiet rebellions and the community's rigid expectations sit alongside present-day moments: Nomi's attempts to say goodbye to neighbors, her tender care of Ray, and her complicated encounters with figures like the Golden Comb and Sheridan Klippenstein. These scenes reveal the warmth and dry humor Nomi brings to her fractured world, from buying Ray a dipping bird on the way to her birth control appointment to watching him try on suits in a clothing store. Together they trace a portrait of a girl who seeks connection and kindness in a community that is slowly closing its doors on her. By the time she passes her driving test and finds her old family couch in a drug dealer's trailer, the world she has known is already quietly dismantling itself around her.

The quieter moments that color Nomi's world and relationships.

Young Tash openly substitutes John Lennon for Jesus Christ during the church call-and-response, signaling her rejection of the Mennonite faith.

Nomi finds Trudie's passport still sitting in a drawer at home, undermining her hopeful belief that her mother is traveling abroad.

Nomi passes The Mouth's house late at night and sees him eating ice cream alone, looking completely defeated by life.

Memory recalled: Young Nomi hides under her parents' bed and overhears Trudie crying to Ray about losing her connection with Tash.

Memory recalled: Tash refuses to attend church for the first time, and Ray and young Nomi go to the service without her.

Travis tells Nomi that Ray is like the boy holding his finger in a dike, saving a town that only mocks him.

Memory recalled: Nomi tells the departing Tash she fears she is going to hell, and Tash gently replies that hell is a metaphor.

Memory recalled: After Tash has already left, Trudie confesses to Nomi that Tash declared herself an atheist.

Memory recalled: Trudie storms to The Mouth's house demanding an apology for condemning Tash; he calls Ray to collect his wife instead.

Nomi destroys The Mouth's church sign in the street after failing to get him to answer his office door.

Memory recalled: Trudie's excommunication is revealed — on the day she left, Ray stared out the window all day while Nomi wandered town.

Nomi cleans out Trudie's room and finds letters from Mr. Quiring confirming his affair with Trudie and his blackmail after she tried to end it.

Nomi leaves Ray a note asking why Trudie didn't take her with her; Ray's written reply says Nomi was sleeping when Trudie left.

Nomi has sex with the Golden Comb in exchange for drugs after fleeing the Kryo Motor Inn.

Alone after Ray's departure, Nomi plays her rented French horn on Abe's Hill until her lips are too numb to hold a cigarette.

Beneath the surface events of the novel lies a series of revelations and emotional turning points that gradually expose the truth of what happened to Nomi's family. Flashbacks reveal Tash's open defiance of the Mennonite faith and Trudie's growing despair at a community that punished the people she loved. Nomi uncovers layer after layer of what drove her mother away — from an overheard midnight conversation to letters hidden in Trudie's room that confirm Mr. Quiring's affair and blackmail. Her own behavior increasingly mirrors her mother's and sister's, culminating in her destroying the church sign, sleeping with the drug dealer for drugs, and finally being excommunicated like Trudie before her. The novel closes with Nomi alone on a hill, playing her French horn, beginning the long process of understanding what her family's suffering cost them all — and what it might yet set her free to become.