Carolyn Samuels is obsessed with the idea of being popular. She is convinced that the only thing keeping her from happiness is her "too heavy for fashion" body and not being a cheerleader. Hyperventilating when she gets nervous doesn't help. When she is paired for a math project with the girl who tormented her in middle school, Jennifer Taylor, she is sure it is going to be another year of pain. With Carolyn's crush on Jennifer's hunky junior quarterback, Brad, her freshman year in high school looks like a rerun of middle school. When Jennifer is the only student who knows why she fell in gym class, Carolyn is blackmailed into doing her math homework in return for Jennifer's silence. Jennifer takes on Carolyn as a pity project since she can't be seen with someone who dresses in jeans and sweatshirts. When Jennifer invites Carolyn to spend the night to make her over and teach her to tumble, Carolyn learns Jennifer's secret and lies to her own friends to cover it up. Will Carolyn become a cheerleader and popular?

Jennifer Taylor is in a good place. With the encouragement of her coach, her best friend Carolyn Samuels, and her boyfriend Brad, she has a good chance of making the Olympic Training team. Everything should go smoothly, but it doesn’t. As she practices for her big meet some factors cause her to lose focus. There is more schoolwork to be done, and her eating disorder is again playing havoc with her life. She thought she had it under control, but it is still there to bother her. Add to this her mother’s sudden very disturbing drinking problem, and her father’s obsession with being mayor. Will having to keep her mother’s secret affect her performance? The thought of losing her chance to be in the Olympics tears her apart. And suddenly, there is a new boy, Danny, in Maura’s life, who might like Jennifer better. Follow Jennifer, Carolyn, and Maura as they go through their sophomore year in Mill Valley High.

Follow the journey of a marriage and a life lived full of love, laughter and pain, joy, and the depths of sorrow. Explore the tiny facets that exist when you are together and the agony of suddenly finding yourself all alone.

Barbara Ehrentreu, a prolific writer in her own right, takes the reader on a poetic/nostalgic journey that will move you to tears as she gives us glimpses of her gifts in life, and the profound loss where she discovered hope peeking through the rainbow of acceptance.

Along the journey you will both laugh and cry as you read of her life before and after she lost Hal, her husband of forty-eight years.