When his grandmother dies, 15-year-old JP's mother starts acting like a teenager, leaving JP to care for his mentally challenged father. Then she wins an old farmhouse and insists they live there--along with some of the neighborhood outcasts. Lost in the chaos of the house, JP doesn't know who he is anymore, or if he matters to either of his parents.
After Grandma Mary dies, sixteen-year-old JP's safe, secure world quickly unravels. He finds himself living in complete chaos when his mother wins a farmhouse in an essay contest and insists on sharing her good fortune with other neighborhood outcasts. Suddenly there are no rules, and the house is filled with poets, musicians, a reformed drug addict, an abused teen, and too many others who seem to have replaced JP and his father in his mother's life. JP longs for his family to be restored to what it once was. But then somehow, amid the madness, his idea of family is redefined in ways he never expected.