Cayenne and her family drift from place to place, living in their van. It hasn't been a bad life--Cayenne and her mother birdwatch in every new location, they have a cozy setup in their van, and they sing and dance and bond over campfires most nights. But they've never belonged anywhere.
As Cayenne enters seventh grade, her parents decide to settle down in a small Montana town. Cayenne hopes that this means she will finally belong somewhere and make some friends. But it turns out that staying in one place isn't easy at all.
As her social studies class studies the Titanic tragedy (the wreckage has just been discovered and her teacher is obsessed), Cayenne sees more and more parallels between the social strata of the infamous ship and her own life. Will she ever squeeze her way into the popular girls' clique, even though they live in fancy houses on the hill and she lives in a tiny, rundown home with chickens in the front yard? Is it possible that the boy she likes actually likes her back? Can she find a way to make room for herself in this town? Does she really want to? Maybe being "normal" isn't all it's cracked up to be.
Unsinkable Cayenne is a character-driven novel-in-verse about family, friendship, first crushes, and fitting in. Set in the mid-1980s, this literary novel is for readers of Megan E. Freeman's Alone and Erin Entrada Kelly's We Dream of Space.