Revolves around fifteen-year-old Chris Boyd and his struggles with his dysfunctional mother and the memories of his late father. His mother is a nurse, and whenever she gets a new patient, she and Chris move into the patient's home to take care of him/her. Here Chris battles love, hate, pain, violence, and especially depression, while temporarily living in the madhouse that is the Dipardi residence.



Alicia (USA: NC) (2010/06/25):
Description (from back cover):
Meet Chris Boyd--teenage nerd. He's scruffy and depressed, detests his mother, the live-in nurse, and yearns for the day when his dead father's Chesterfield coat will fit. Now he's stuck in the house of a dying lady and her thirty-year-old misfit son, Lloyd Dipardi. Lloyd may not know his ear from his elbow but he loves to teach kids a thing or two about life. Watch out, Chris...

This book is by Paul Zindel.