Seventeen-year-old Blade Peters, a misfit with a few friends and an on-again, off-again girlfriend, Chapel, is having the worst high school year ever. He wishes he could disappear from the public eye, because the only thing worse than reading about his rock-n-roll legend family every day on the celebrity gossip blogs, is being a member of it. He detests his rock-star parent’s decadent parties, is frightened by his younger sister’s obvious depression, and haunted by memories of how rock-n-roll has ruined his life. Regardless of his family's fame and all the adoring fans, Blade knows his family is deeply flawed, and even fragile. When his father is arrested—again—he finds his mother inconsolably crying in her bathroom. With one more summer left in Hollywood before leaving for college, he knows time is running out if he wants his family to mean more than infamous headlines; if he wants his family to survive. Outspoken in his desire for change, he assumes the leadership in his dysfunctional family and hatches a plan that will send the Peters on a journey to Africa, and, if it works, just may change their lives—if it doesn’t kill them first.
In his quest to show himself, his family, and ultimately an entire community, that you can recover from your mistakes with greater strength, courage and understanding, Blade inadvertently becomes a leader, like Peter, who taught that if you want to be a leader in life, you have to be humble and serve other people.
In this novel-in-verse for teens, readers will see the eccentricities of fame, humor, sorrow, love, and forgiveness in the life of a "famous" misfit, who would rather be true to himself than make Hollywood headlines in his quest for a life filled with faith. And love.
