Shayla lives with her mother and her teenage sister, Tia, in a rough area of Houston. Shayla makes friends with a strange girl who has moved in next door. Kambia is always making up crazy stories, including one about being attacked by the wallpaper wolves that come out of the bedroom walls and maul her at night.

As their friendship grows, Shayla begins to realise that Kambia's tales are not make-believe, but are about the horrors that she faces at home. Torn between misguided loyalty and harrowing truth, Shayla is forced to make an awful choice. In doing so, she surrenders her childhood innocence, an innocence that Kambia Elaine has never been allowed to have.

There are 256 pages in this book. This book was published 2004 by Pan Macmillan .

Lori Aurelia Williams is the author of When Kambia Elaine Flew in from Neptune and Shayla's Double Brown Baby Blues. She holds a master's degree in English from the University of Texas at Austin, where she was awarded both a James A. Michener Fellowship and a scholarship in creative writing. Born in Houston, Lori Aurelia Williams lives in Austin.