Riding Out the Storm

Zach is riding the Greyhound bus through a snowstorm to visit his older brother Derek, whom he�hasn't seen in seven months. That's when their parents finally went broke paying Derek's doctor's bills and had to give him up as a ward of the state. Nothing��ot drawing in his sketchbook, not basketball��ets Zach forget that his brother is living in a mental institution five states away. But surprisingly, sitting next to�a talkative teenage girl he nicknames Purplehead starts to take the edge off Zach's pain.

Prompted by a chain of unpredictable events and by the people he meets along the way, Zach's cynical humor gives us a poignant look at medical insurance and health care systems for the mentally ill, and at the everyday fears, joys, and revelations of adolescence.