Crazy Diamond — David Chotjewitz

"I don't wanna be famous

I don't wanna be who you are

I don't wanna be a trademark

I don't wanna be a wannabe superstar

I wanna be infamous,

Incapable,

unfaceable,

untraceable..."

That's Mira M. And this is the story of her unforgettable life -- as a kid alone in a junkyard tire swing, to her escape from Croatia at age nine in a Marshall amp road case in the rear of her uncle Lou's van. A musician, he hands her the key to her future: a guitar.

When she's fourteen, Mira meets Melody, Rosa, and Jackson, three teens who stow away from Ghana in a ship-ping container and end up -- to their surprise -- in Hamburg, Germany. What stories they have! And what a story the four of them, plus Kralle (a little older and wiser) and Zucka (the record producer's son), share on the way to the fame that all of them covet -- except Mira, even after the MTV Awards show in Barcelona. Her song lyrics tell her truth.

But are they her lyrics? Her music? She swears so. But who listens, now that she's eighteen -- and dead?