A first novel about a pair of 14-year-old twins--Medina and Jim--who are transplanted to Palos Verdes, California when their cardiologist father takes a job there. Their parents` marriage immediately becomes precarious; their father is never home, their mother is seriously depressed. The twins, inevitably, react in damaging ways to their new environment, but the affection between them remains, and Medina, though she grows up fast, manages to survive.