Lauren Kessler

"95 percent of the millions of American men and women who go to prison eventually get out. What happens to them? There's Arnoldo, who came of age inside a maximum security penitentiary, now free after nineteen years. Trevor and Catherine, who spent half of their young lives behind bars for terrible crimes committed when they were kids. Dave, inside the walls for 34 years, now about to reenter an unrecognizable world. Vicki, a five-time loser who had...

With the eye of a reporter, the curiosity of an anthropologist, and the open (and sometimes wounded) heart of a mother, writer Lauren Kessler embeds herself in her about-to-be-teenage daughter's life. In seventh- and eighth-grade classrooms, at home, online, at the mall, and at summer camp, Kessler observes, investigates, chronicles--and participates in--the life of a twenty-first-century teen. As she begins to better understand and appreciate her...