"Alex Green is a young girl in a world much like ours. But this version of 1950's America is characterized by a significant event: The Mass Dragoning of 1955, when hundreds of thousands of ordinary wives and mothers sprouted wings, scales and talons, left a trail of fiery destruction in their path, and took to the skies. Was it their choice? What will become of those left behind? Why did Alex's beloved Aunt Marla transform but her mother did not?...

Eisenhower is President. Rock 'n' Roll is king. And Wade 'Cry-Baby' Walker is the baddest hood in his high school. Walker heads up a supercool cast as the irresistible bad boy whose amazing ability to shed one single tear drives all the girls wild, especially Allison Vernon-Williams, a rich, beautiful 'square' who finds herself uncontrollably drawn to the dreamy juvenile delinquent and his forbidden world of rockabilly music, fast cars and faster...

When Pop sells the crumbling mansion next door to waspish newcomers for more than it's worth, he celebrates with plans to build a swimming pool but his neighbors soon plot their revenge. Can the Larkin clan keep him out of prison?

Follows the warm-hearted, wheeler-dealing adventures of the Larkin family in the idyllic Kent countryside.