Fun-loving troublemaker Ivy Sawyer is unjustly fired from her ice cream shop job, and now she’s out for revenge. The owner of the shop is running to be reelected mayor of their small town, and Ivy will do anything to keep him from winning. What she doesn’t expect is being elected mayor herself as the candidate of the prankish “Surprise Party.” Now Ivy has to deal with governing the town while juggling her senior year of high school and her activist friends’ expectations. She has big problems to solve, from poverty to housing to flooding, and can’t seem to win over the conservative city council. Knowing people’s lives are on the line, Ivy sets out to govern creatively without losing who she is. But she’ll have to figure out: what’s the difference between a troublemaker and a leader?
Max Howard lives in Wisconsin and is the author of The Water Year, Fifteen and Change, and the forthcoming book Everything in Its Path. Every day, Max tries to remember three things: a) the pen is mightier than the sword; b) the first step toward building a better world is having a dream of how things could be different; c) the second step is inviting other people to share in that dream.