More than anything, Edgar wants to leave the carnival town of Bombay Island to become a famous painter in New Chelsea, a fabulous place he read about in an old history book.
Edgar loves Eleanor, a fiery spirit with an affection for colorful cursing who inhabits a china doll, but she doesn’t want Edgar to go. She knows what the mainland is like since The Twelve, the earthquake that turned California into a separate country surrounded by tiny islands, and it’s no place for a sensitive soul like Edgar.
When Edgar slips away to follow his dream, he learns that he truly does love his home. But when he returns, he brings the horrors of the Mainland with him. Edgar must find the strength within himself to battle a horrible monster of a man who plans to destroy everything that’s good about Bombay Island.
