When Tracy’s brother Aaron commits suicide, she inherits his dogs: two dog-aggressive pit bulls and the French mastiff Stella. As Tracy navigates her grief, she also has to learn how to care for her new dogs – who come with issues of their own. The dogs provide independent Tracy with ready-made fences, and necessitate new relationships with others exploring their own memories, fractured families and mental health issues. Life in the small Wisconsin town is a fishbowl of sorts, but also a place where pain is private – oblique and whispered. For anyone who has loved a dog, for anyone who has tried to navigate the class distinctions of small-town America, for anyone who has tried to balance the expectations of who the world says they should be with their own unruly desires, This Business of the Flesh speaks to the families & friendships we make out of our pasts.