Under the influence of a controlling mother and a distant father, Lou Ann Campbell can't get away with much. And usually, she doesn't want to: She's a good girl, helping out on the family's Texas wheat farm and talking things over with the five small dolls she keeps in a box-one for every baby her mother has lost. But this summer-the summer she turns 12-Lou Ann does something she's not supposed to. She starts to keep a diary, writing down her thoughts on stolen pieces of paper and hiding them under a barrel out behind the bunkhouse. It's the first of many rules broken as Lou Ann struggles to figure out what's happening in her family and who she might become outside of it.

During this strange summer, where things that should be pleasant and exciting-their annual July 4th party, the prospect of a new baby, budding flirtations-have a way of turning sour, Lou Ann shares it all with her diary and with us. Referring to a nearby abandoned house, she writes that "I am watching close to see how long it takes for things to fall apart on their own" (p. 29), and soon the same appears to be true of her own family. As her mother becomes increasingly unstable and her father seeks illicit comfort, Lou Ann is pushed closer and closer towards a series of decisions that will change all their lives forever.