High school senior Leo Caraway, a conservative Republican, learns that his biological father is a punk rock legend.

When a family trip to the Grand Canyon turns out to be a trick to take her to a remote, all-girl, residential treatment center for unstable teenagers, sixteen-year-old Brit, devastated by her father's duplicity, comes to realize that only through inner strength and the help of other inmates who become her friends can she endure the harsh conditions of the prison-like institution and plan a way to escape.

Fourteen-year-old Sparrow Cooke of Brooklyn has always been the kind of child who prefers reading books to playing with friends (not that she has many of those) and since fifth grade the one person who seemed to understand her was the school librarian--so when Mrs. Wexler was killed in an accident, Sparrow's world came apart, and when she was found on the edge of the school roof everyone assumed that it was a suicide attempt, which Sparrow denies,...