The story of Jerri Blank, a 46 year-old ex-junkie and ex-con who emerges from her long prison stay with a special goodbye prison riot with her cellmates and returns to high school in a bid to start her life over, only to confront the most dangerous gang of all--the cool kids. After a long bus ride, Jerri arrives at her childhood home to find that her father is now in a coma and has re-married and fathered a child. Although mortified by her stepdaughter's return, his new wife begrudgingly allows Jerri to move in when the family doctor suggests that her presence might bring her father out of his thirty-two-year coma.