Unfinished Portrait of Jessica - Tapa dura

A trip to Mexico to visit the divorced vagabond father whom she idolizes cures fourteen-year-old Jessica of certain illusions and helps her reconstruct her relationship with her mother.

's parents divorce and her father leaves, Jessica decides that the best way to punish her mother is to retreat to her room, a shrine to her glamorous traveling photographer dad.
Then Jessica's mother offers to let her visit her father in Mexico for the holidays, at the fabulous house of her father's uncle Lucius, a famous painter. Jessica is thrilled.
Once there, she falls under the spell of Lucius's home, and his Christmas guests, Brooke and Tony, who are college age. Together the three young people race around Acapulco in an old Jeep, swim, and go dancing. It's paradise. Except for dad. Here in paradise he's not the father Jessica dreamed of at all....
From the Paperback edition.