"My name is Rory Dawn Hendrix, feebleminded daughter of a feebleminded daughter, herself the product of feebleminded stock. Welcome to the Calle."

Despite the above quote, Rory Dawn is an intelligent and precocious girl who lives with her mother in the Calle, a trailer park in the middle of nowhere somewhere near Reno, Nevada. This first novel spans Rory's life from about four years old to about fifteen. The novel is very heavy and painful to read at times but Rory is, at heart, a strong and passionate presence. Despite the hardships and abuse she suffers, she appears to have a resilience that is remarkable.

From early on in her life, Rory has had to be a parental child to her mother and her grandmother. Her mother's first children, four sons, were born beginning when she was fifteen years old. They are the sons of the man she babysat for. Rory came along about ten years after the boys who are now out of the house and visit rarely. Rory's mother is often drunk or emotionally unavailable to Rory. Rory has been known to walk home from school saying 'Please don't be drunk' over and over to herself. Rory was very close to her maternal grandmother but she moved away. When her grandmother lived in Calle, she had a gambling addiction and spent all her money on the slot machines.

The book is comprised of Rory's journals, social worker notes and letters to Rory from her grandmother, all of which serve to tell Rory's story.

Rory's mother was abused as a child at the hands of her father. Rory, too, suffers abuse, from a neighbor in the Calle, keeping it hidden for a very long time. Once the secret comes out, Rory lives with great shame. We learn that Rory sees graffiti in the school bathroom that says 'I hate Rory D.' We later learn that Rory wrote that herself. She has left a marker near the graffiti in the hopes that someone will write something nice about her but no one ever does. This internal shame that Rory suffers because of the abuse is extensive.

Rory shines in the school administrators' and teachers' eyes but to the other students she is trailer trash and looked on askance despite her scholastic abilities and achievements.

She loves the Girl Scout Handbook so much, checking it out over and over again, that the library manages to put it in the used bin, and sells it to her for a dime. Rory doesn't really belong to the Girl Scouts but on her own she humorously gains patches for different accomplishments.

The book has its humorous parts but they are laden with an undercurrent of pain and heartfelt sorrow. Rory is someone we root for and hope that the cycle of abuse can stop with her; that with her life, something good can develop and grow.