In this book the story takes place in 1935, the main character's (Moose) family moves to Alcatraz Island, so that his father can work as a guard and his mentally-challenged sister Nataly can attend a special school in San Francisco. Nataly has attended many facilities before but nobody has been able to help her, no one knows what her problem is. Today it would be autism. Autism is a developmental disorder that appears in the first 3 years of life, and affects the brain's normal development of social and communication skills.
When they get to the Island, Moose has no problems making friends, but he doesn't have the chance to have fun with them since he has to take care of her mentally challenged sister Nataly, who is actually 15 years old but her mom says she's 10, and for 5 years in a row her mom has been celebrating her 10th birthday. Moose is 13 years old and her mom makes it seem as if he was the oldest.
One of Moose's friends the warden's daughter Piper (they both go to school in San Francisco) is a troublemaker who's always looking for a way to make money out of (Alcatraz) where they live. The warden prohibits Piper and anybody that lives in Alcatraz to talk about anything that happens in there. But she doesn't care knowing that she won't get caught. For example, she tricked her classmates into thinking that the convicts where going to do their laundry, it was her the one who did it and made them give her dirty clothes for a small amount of money.
