After escaping their foster home, sixteen-year-old Sissy and her brother, Boy, are finally reunited with their big sister, and together they reinvent themselves as graffiti artists, but when tragedy strikes, Sissy is forced to rely on her trash-picking skills to save them all from an uncertain fate.

Having come from nearly nothing and been surrounded with hardship her whole life, Pert is trying to find a way out of her dead-end existence and not go the way of her mother and sister, but breaking out isn't so easy to do without any guidance or support.

Relates how Mary Shelley spent time as a teenager living with family friends in Scotland, and how this period of her life may have influenced her writing of 'Frankenstein.'

Miss Raney is determined to win a ribbon for her biscuits at the Washita County fair, but to no avail, until her ever-faithful horse, Old Thunder, wins the plowhorse race.