Dur­ing the 1950s, Elvis-mania was sweep­ing the world. Kids were lis­ten­ing to rock and roll and becom­ing com­plete­ly caught up in thrilling new music and attrac­tive new celebri­ties. Enter four­teen-year-old Paula Levy, the daugh­ter of a Holo­caust sur­vivor who isn’t yet ready to share his past and a moth­er — also Jew­ish — who is a child of the Depres­sion. They share noth­ing of their his­to­ries with Paula, who is grow­ing up in Queens, New York and try­ing to make sense of the world around her with­out the help of atten­tive parents.

Paula is also con­cerned about her social sta­tus. She isn’t one of the ​“cool kids” and longs to be accept­ed into a cir­cle of friends she thinks are more in tune with the world of the 1950s — friends with par­ents who under­stand the impor­tance of rock and roll, know how to behave, and don’t look like ​“creeps.” Elvis is the epit­o­me of ​“cool”; Paula’s par­ents, a bit old-fash­ioned and often too strict, are not. Her friend Bar­bara, who’s seem­ing­ly non-Jew­ish and has a rougher fam­i­ly back­ground, is the kind of ​“cool” Paula longs to be.

To escape their con­fus­ing and unsat­is­fy­ing lives, Paula and Bar­bara hatch a plan to run away from home like their lit­er­ary hero, Hold­en Caulfield. They decide to go to Mem­phis to meet Elvis. They ulti­mate­ly make it to Hobo­ken, New Jer­sey, where Bar­bara’s bio­log­i­cal father, a jazz musi­cian who has­n’t seen her since she was an infant, has trou­ble find­ing work and dri­ves a cab to make a liv­ing. The reunion does­n’t go as planned and, after some fright­en­ing expe­ri­ences, the girls land back in New York, unin­ten­tion­al­ly mir­ror­ing Hold­en Caulfield­’s unsuc­cess­ful attempt to break free from school and unmet expectations.

Both girls learn impor­tant lessons from their adven­ture, as well as some sur­pris­ing things about their fam­i­ly his­to­ries. Paula learns more about her con­nec­tion to the Holo­caust, and Bar­bara dis­cov­ers that she and her moth­er are Jew­ish. The girls are now on a path to under­stand­ing and growth, ready to resume their jour­neys toward their future selves. And a spe­cial sur­prise is in their more imme­di­ate future: they’ll get the thrilling chance to be in the audi­ence when Elvis Pres­ley appears on the Ed Sul­li­van show.

This is an engross­ing sto­ry that will be of inter­est to young adults who are also strug­gling to find their place in a con­fus­ing world — a world where fam­i­ly often plays a much more sig­nif­i­cant role than they pre­vi­ous­ly knew.