My Life As a Rat traces a life cast away from family and the Church that forces Violet Kerrigan to discover her own identity, to break powerful spell of family, and to emerge from her long banishment as a "rat" into a transformed life.

The daughter of a German high school teacher who was forced to work as a gravedigger after immigrating to upstate New York, Rebecca begins a life-changing pilgrimage throughout America in the wake of a prejudice-motivated tragedy.