Seventh-grader Sharkita "Kita" embarks on a tumultuous journey to keep her family together while handling the consequences of her mother's alcoholism.

Maverick Falconer is just starting middle school and he wishes he were a hero like his father because maybe then he could deal with his mother's drinking and series of abusive boyfriends, not to mention the kids who bully him in middle school (pretty much the same ones who bullied him in elementary school)--but as the year passes he begins to realize that other kids have problems too, and maybe if they can all survive sixth-grade things will get better....

In September 1973, as the school year begins, high-school senior Kurt Shoemaker determines to be "normal," despite his chaotic home life and the affection he has for his friends in the therapy group dubbed the Madman Underground.

Seventeen-year-old Carson Speier is bored of Billings, Montana, and resentful that he has to help his mother take care of his father, a dying alcoholic whom he has not seen in fourteen years--but then he meets Aisha, a beautiful African American girl who has run away from her own difficult family, and together they embark on a journey of discovery that may help them both come to terms with their lives.