A boy’s family travels to the Allegheny Mountains in order for his entomologist father to find an undiscovered moth he remembers seeing there in his youth. Over the course of the summer, the boy’s sister, who suffers from autism, finds she can speak the language of various insects and creatures of nature, allowing her to understand the world around her for the first time in her life. And as the boy himself comes of age, he discovers that he speaks a different sort of language as well. As each person journeys closer to their true nature, tension is eased within the sometimes strained relationships of this unique family.

A Nebula Award Finalist, Barzak’s novella combines realism and fantasy to explore how we each experience the world through our own inimitable language, creating distance even from those closest to us.