Over a period spanning the better part of four decades, Barbara Wersba has written more than two dozen books, including several well-received novels for young adults that feature sensitive, artistic teens as protagonists and themes which advocate the individual's right to self-expression. Wersba began her career as a novelist in her mid-twenties after many years in the theater. She spent her teen years at a private school and in theater workshops in New York City, and her familiarity with the glittering, high-rise-canyon milieu of Manhattan and the emotional problems of its affluent, private-school adolescents has become a mainstay of her fiction. Often her novels chronicle the tale of a loner or misfit--usually "suffering from the advantages of a secure childhood," as School Library Journal contributor Joanne Aswell remarked--who is at odds with his or her parents, but through an unusual friendship or an unlikely achievement obtains a newfound...