Summer vacation. 1999. Fourteen-year-old Bandit finds herself alone and suffering in silence after a death in her family. Unable to cope with her grief-and forced to grow up quickly by neglectful parents-Bandit is in desperate need of a friend: Even if that friend is the neighborhood outcast, Allison Gale... a large-nosed girl with no sense of smell and a penchant for eating raw onions.

The Ballad of Allison and Bandit tackles grief, growing up, and gaining a purpose. It's a darkly humorous drama about abandonment, isolation, mortality, friendship, and hope.