A thirteen-year-old girl seemingly destined for a modeling career finds she has a deformation of the spine called scoliosis.

When Davey Wexler's father is killed in a holdup in Atlantic City, her mother moves Davey and her brother to Los Alamos to get away from the memories--but Davey is a girl frozen in fear and anger, until she meets an older boy called Wolf who can read her tiger eyes.

A summer in Tarrytown, New York, is a lot of fun for ten-year-old Sheila even though her friends make her face up to some self-truths she does not want to admit.