Fifteen year old Allison has been in foster homes most of her life until she is finally adopted, along with a younger foster sister, into a loving home in Laguna Beach, California. But her birth mother, who had given her up at birth, has decided she now wants Allison back. Extremely unstable and tortured with bipolar disorder, her birth mother begins to try and convince Allison to come live with her, finally resorting to the attempted murder of Allison's new mother. From Southern California to Washington State, Allison is introduced to a strange world she never knew existed. It is the world of her birth mother and her illness.