Dead Quivers, A Key West Summer

It's the hot and humid summer of 1977 in the Florida Keys. The "Son of Sam" killer is terrorizing New York City residents, stalking them with a .44 magnum handgun, Jimmy Buffett's song, Wasted away in Margaritaville is getting radio play and climbing the charts and Elvis Presley will drop dead in his bathroom at Graceland Mansion.

For Henry Roberts, a native born Conch, none of that concerns him very much. He has his own family dilemmas he is wrestling with. His mother has separated from his father, leaving the Keys for the mainland to be near the state hospital for the mentally insane where his older brother has been recently committed.

Henry's father, Jake, a fisherman, has decided to go shrimping for the summer and dump Henry off in Key West at his great Aunt Lela's house whom Henry has never met before and is raising a bastard grandson, Roberto, after his mother abandoned him as an infant. During Henry's long summer stay on Bone Island he discovers why the locals frequently refer to Key West as Key Weird.