When 17-year-old Hazel Newlevant takes a summer job
clearing ivy from the forest in her home town of Portland, Oregon, her only
expectation is to earn a little money. Homeschooled, affluent, and sheltered,
Hazel soon finds her job working side by side with at-risk teens to be an
initiation into a new world that she has no skill in navigating. This
uncomfortable and compelling memoir is an important story of a girl's awakening
to the racial insularity of her life, the power of white privilege, and the
hidden story of segregation in Portland.