Part 1 of Essay
Ava has spent the last 10 years living in Atlanta. When she discovers she's infected with HIV, she sells her hairdressing business and heads back to her childhood home of Idlewild, Michigan, to spend the summer with her recently widowed sister before moving on to San Francisco. Once there, however, she finds herself embroi ....

Part 2 of Essay
.... to speak in pulpits stopped coming; and all the loved ones she knows during her ten years in Atlanta just smile at her and walk in the opposite direction, Ava Johnson decides to sell her hair salon and moves to San Francisco but wants to summer in Idlewild, the small town in northern Michigan where she grew up. Now just a half-abandoned dot on the map, Idlewild offers the only safe haven for Ava, now nearly 30. Telling herself she's just visiting her older sister, Joyce, for a few weeks before she moves on to ....