It’s 1970s Chicago. Eleven-year-old Matasha Wax is in the sixth grade and starting to experience the trials of growing up. Her parents are in a standoff over her mother’s desire to adopt a refugee child from Vietnam, and her best friend, Jean, is ignoring her. As she watches the other girls in school starting to grow inches and breasts, Matasha remains a puny four-foot-four—which means she will need growth hormone shots, and she is terrified of needles. Apart from her daily reading of the advice columns in the newspaper and keeping up with the Patty Hearst and Watergate scandals, Matasha is fixated by the story of a nine-year-old boy who has gone missing. When mysterious letters start arriving from Switzerland and her mother suddenly disappears, Matasha knows something else is terribly wrong—but no one will tell her what is happening, so she has to figure it all out for herself.
A tale of a girl growing up while her family grows apart, Matasha is a poignant look at resilience in the face of adolescent loneliness, divorce, bullying and slow development.