Miles "Pudge" Halter is done with his safe life at home. His whole life has been one big non-event, and his obsession with famous last words has only made him long for 'the Great Perhaps' (Francois Rabelais, poet). He moves into the sometimes crazy to anything but dull world of Culver Creek Boarding School, and his life becomes the opposite of safe. Because Alaska Young is there too. The beautiful, smart, funny, sexy, self-destructive and utterly fascinating Alaska Young. She is an event in itself. She draws Pudge into her world, launches him into 'the Great Perhaps' and steals his heart. Then nothing is the same.