Stevie has a wonderful life with her parents, who she believes are the best parents possible. But they are her only family. And they never talk about their past. And then (just before the book begins) they are both killed in a car accident.
Stevie is shipped off to live with her mother's father. A grandfather that she's never met, and never heard anything about. He runs a cheap motel in a tiny town not too far from Dallas, Texas. He is reserved, remote, set in his ways, and optimistic Stevie has a hard time getting through his shell and learning anything about her past. There are several nice secondary characters... the motel's handyman and his son (who Stevie quickly develops a mild crush on), the office assistant, who believes old movies can make anything better, and a delinquent fellow classmate at a tutor's house.
Towards the end of the book, she gets to go for a spell to meet her father's sister and her family - also people she never met and knows nothing about. They are a loud, gregarious, family of extreme extroverts, who Stevie quickly grows to love, but finds exhausting to be around all the time.
When they offer to let her live with them, she must choose between them, and difficult grandfather she's only just beginning to know.
I've loved several of Holt's other books, but this one didn't quite live up to my expectations. The one problem, but it's a big one, is that I constantly felt it unbelievable that Stevie would be so upbeat and fully functional so quickly after both of her parents were killed, she lost her home, and was sent off with what she could pack in a suitcase to live with a man she didn't know existed. I think even the most optimistic and upbeat person in the world would be so devastated that they would suffer pretty severe depression for some time. Stevie's depression episodes are fleeting at best. For that one reason, the book felt it lacked the realism one expects from a novel like this. But, if that had been there, it would have been a totally different story. ( )