For vermiculturist Ruth Budge the worm business is thriving... until a disembodied toe turns up on the golf course, and members of a strange cult begin to infiltrate the quiet seaside town of Finny, California. Life is already crazy for forty-seven-year-old Ruth, juggling the needs of her worm farm, her new spouse and a platoon of crippled seabirds bequeathed to her by her dead husband. Then there's the insanity swirling around the first ever Finny Fog Festival and the discovery of a bizarre diary from one of the town's seediest ancestors. Things go from misty to murderous as a man plummets to his death from an exploding hot air balloon. Is the craziness a byproduct of the festival or a decades old curse unearthed in the antique diary? Ruth had better find out fast or her worms won't be the only things six feet under!