A moving novel about a diverse group of teenagers in a Brooklyn neighborhood.

Eric is fiercely protective of his little brother, Mickey. The world sees only his fierceness. China and Ebony, watching outside the day care near McDonald's, see him as "mad scary." Later, a teacher sees that Eric is an artist worth her attention. He is one of eleven characters -- black, white, Pakistani, Puerto Rican -- whose story over seven years in Brooklyn is worth anyone's attention. Rarely does such power and tenderness illuminate a book and the true worlds of its kids. Most attend the same school; their live take different trajectories yet intertwine, overlap, cast light upon the others. Grace and Sam are lucky enough to be beautiful. Sonia struggles to live the life of a good Muslim girl in a foreign America. Monique and Molly are sisters who each feel saved by the other. Keisha says, "Before Gingerbread first talked to me, I'd a long time forgotten about laughing, but the second after he said his own name right out loud, I remembered again. When we first started, I asked why he laughed so much, and he said, like it ought to be plain as day, Because life is funny, and maybe that's when I for real started to fall in love." Frozen from laughter and from tears, Linnette warns to Eric when she hears him being told: "Your mother's fighting a war out there. That war got her so young she's been fighting since before you were a thought." for his mother wants nothing to do with Eric. Her enemy is the crack addiction, something Gingerbread was born with and yet can still say, and mean, "If you have a good anybody to help you through, you can do anything." This book brims with "good anybodys."