Comparable to Megan Abbott's Dare Me , Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend , Roberto Bolano's Savage Detectives , and Jonathan Franzen's Crossroads. The story involves a group of diverse, non-conformist teenagers in high school during the early 1980's. With punk rock music as its soundtrack a group of teens discover Marxism and romance in the heart of Ronald Reagan's America and find that in Orange County California asserting one's sexual, political and racial identity can be hazardous to one's health.