Why had her father left, and why did she never hear from him? Even if her mother had divorced him, why had he forgotten her, too? For three years Chrissa has been angry. Too angry to speak to her mother, Chrissa only wants to figure out why Nick, her father, has gone out of both their lives. She had never been the child he wanted; every memory of him said he thought she had no spunk, was an unattractive nothing. Yet she need him. Needed him to care.

"We're not going to go on like this," her mother said. "I'm sending you to live with Gram for a year." Chrissa couldn't believe it. Spend a year in the country, instead of in New York City? What would she do there? How would she survive? Yet her grandmother was Nick's mother. MIght the country hold the secret of where Nick had gone?

There is more to do at Gram's than Chrissa imagined, especially when the search for her father takes an unexpected turn as her grandmother becomes the dupe of an unscrupulous duo. Her father is needed, Chrissa thinks, to save Gram. Yet in the end it is Chrissa herself who successfully confronts not one crisis, but two. And when she does discover what has happened to her father, it is after the ice that held her heart has already melted. She no longer needs his approval. She is her own person.