After one too many tangles with trouble, fifteen-year-old Tina Tolliver has been sentenced to spend the summer in Truth, Texas with her no-nonsense grandmother.
Being an only child from Los Angeles, Tina finds life in a small town intolerable and devises a plan in hopes of earning a one-way ticket back home to her friends. But when she meets sexy, bad boy Billy Preston, she wonders if staying around might be worth her while.
Her punishment includes cleaning out the attic in the unbearable southern heat. While there she discovers a journal from fifty years ago which contains details of an unsolved murder—which may have involved her grandmother.
Armed with this shocking new information, Tina delves into mystery and adventure bigger than her crush on Billy and soon learns that sometimes living a lie is the only way to survive in Truth.
