by Gary Feinstein (Author)

A poignant, and often funny, story of a young girl's transformative journey while looking for family in unexpected places.

Before

Living with a single mother who receives annual Christmas cards from the bartenders in town, high school sophomore Dakota Lodi is used to a bumpy ride in life. To cope, she retreats into her own universe. Dakotaworld. A place where you keep a low profile, obsess over your awesome music playlists, or hang out with your only friend, Rosie Pe?a. Sure, she makes a series of bad choices that gets her into trouble at school, but she can deal with that. Until her mother is sentenced to four years in prison on drug charges, and her world is shattered.

After

Forced to live with her estranged grandmother, Dakota decides to search for the father she's never known. With the help of Rosie, they track down her mother's old friends, but most of them aren't too stoked about reliving the past, especially when the girls unearth a cold-case homicide. Dakota suspects the case is related to her fathers story, but to learn the truth, she'll have to keep digging. She'll have to be smart, and think twice before doing anything reckless. She'll have to become a new version of herself.