While her friends are spending their summers having pool parties and sleepovers, twelve-year-old Carolina (Carol) is spending hers in the middle of the New Mexico desert, helping her parents move the grandfather she's never met into a home for people with dementia. At first, Carol avoids prickly Grandpa Serge. But as the summer wears on and the heat bears down, Carol finds herself drawn to him, fascinated by the crazy stories he tells her about a...

Moving is never easy. Especially when you are about to turn thirteen, forced to leave a lush paradise for a barren wasteland and afflicted by a know-it-all-smart-aleck for a brother. With an old lady for her new neighbor and parents who think looking at rocks is fun, Micay has only her geeky brother to console her. At least he understood that beach bunnies were not meant to be desert rats.Though she is determined to remain miserable in her new life,...