Disfigured by boiling water, Finch Nobles is so ugly people shun her. So Finch, who is employed as a caretaker in a cemetery, finds company in the dead who talk to her. Among her friends are the spirits of a beauty queen and of a homeless man.
A girl kills her mother for forcing her into prostitution and makes it look an accident. She becomes a vagabond and the novel follows her life of abuse at the hands of men, until she is rescued by social workers.