A series of letters relating what happens when, after her father loses his job, Lydia Grace goes to live with her Uncle Jim in the city but takes her love for gardening with her.

"Jess finds a secret diary and imagines what it would be like to be a girl who has everything. Will she become so wrapped up in someone else's life that she misses a chance to create her own? Jess cleans houses to save money for college, because her dad -- unemployed and off the wagon yet again -- has moved the two of them out of the city into a decrepit borrowed tent and trailer. Jess wavers between anger at her father and fear that poverty and addiction...

After surviving overcrowding, disease, and unemployment, five hundred lottery winners are promised a new start on Pacifica, but Marin Carey, corsario royalty, knows no island paradise exists.