Sixteen-year-old Alice Carroll is a self-illustrated girl; grieving her mother's death two years before, hating her father for abandoning her and resenting her grandmother's low expectations, she armors herself with ink before entering a new high school in a privileged neighborhood of Portland, Oregon. Her entry into that Wonderland of sculptured landscaping and SUVs is complicated by her summer flirtation with Matthew, a nice college boy who comes by her work at Comikaze Coffee, a coffee and comics shop, to walk her home most nights. Alice’s expectations are low; she’s had too many losses to believe that anyone stays, more losses than anyone knows. But some people ignore her warnings, finding a way beyond Alice’s illustrated walls, and she’s torn between trusting in friendship and holding on tight to grief. ALICE IN BLACK is a contemporary young adult novel and the first in the Willamette High series.