Sean’s blond-bombshell mother regularly entertains Black Panthers and movie stars in the family’s marble and glass penthouse. His enigmatic father uses a jet helicopter to drop Sean off at the video arcade. The three live happily together "eight-hundred feet in the air above San Francisco; in an apartment at the top of a building at the top of a hill: full of light, full of voices, full of windows, full of water and bridges and hills." But when his father divorces his mother and marries her best friend, Sean’s life blows apart. His memoir shows us how he survived, spinning out a "deliriously searing and convincing" portrait of a wicked stepmother ( The New York Times Book Review ), a meeting with the pope, sexual awakening, and a tour of "the planet’s most interesting reform schools" ( Details ).