At sixteen, Morgan Lindstrum has the life every girl dreams of-at least that's how it appears. A privileged only child, she has everything she could ever want, except her parents' attention. A Princeton physicist and a high-powered executive, they barely have time for each other, much less for Morgan. When her beloved grandfather dies, depriving Morgan of the only steadfast person in her life, she forces her way into her mother's secret past and learns he was never her grandfather at all. To find out the truth about her family, Morgan makes her way to Brooklyn, where she meets Terence Mulvaney, the Irish immigrant father whom her mother disowned. Morgan wants answers, but instead of satisfying her curiosity, Mulvaney shows her the people in his condemned tenement building, who are suffering and have nowhere to go. He challenges her to help them by tearing away the veil of shame and showing her wealthy parents and her advantaged circle of friends a world they don't want to know about. The temptation to walk away from this ugly reality, as her mother did, is strong. But if she does, can Morgan ever really leave behind what she learned when she crossed into Brooklyn?
