La Grange, Vermont: Teenage Bissie saves the life of a turtle on the same day her family buries her older brother Jeremy. She does a terrible thing keeping Turtle as a pet but promises to release him after his broken leg heals.
 
The tiny shiretown of La Grange, Vermont has resisted reinvention for eight generations, and Bissie starts to think she’ll always be the girl with the dead brother. Friends, classmates, and even her parents keep their distance, absorbed in their own lives and concerns. 

Bissie names her turtle Enzo, and abandonment becomes their bond. 

When Enzo starts to appear in Bissie’s dreams, a mysterious new friend enters her life, and a box of Jeremy’s secret sketchbooks surfaces, Bissie questions the neurodivergent boy her brother hid from the world, her family’s generational trauma, notions of friendship and intimacy, and whether Enzo had a plan all along.  

Traversing the personalities and places of a small valley town in Northern New England, Turtle Girly Honey Dirt Country Up North tells a coming-of-age story with an ethereal twist as Bissie and the most important people in her life navigate family relationships, class divides, belonging, sexuality, and the absurdity of striving for normal.