Ida needs a shrink; or so her philandering father thinks, and he sends her to a Seattle psychiatrist. Immediately wise to the head games of her new shrink, who she nicknames Siggy or Sig, Ida begins a coming-of-age journey. At the beginning of her therapy Ida, whose alter ego is Dora, and her small posse of pals-Little Teena, Ave Maria, and Obsidian-engage in what they call "art attacks" for teen fun and mayhem. Ida has a secret: she is in love with Obsidian. What's more, whenever she gets close to intimacy or the crisis of deep emotions, Ida faints or loses her voice. Ida and her friends hatch a plan to secretly record and film Siggy and Ida intends to make an experimental art film in which he figures. Sig becomes the target of her teen rage and angst, but something goes terribly wrong at a crucial moment of filming Siggy at a nearby hospital when Ida finds her father in the emergency room having suffered an acute heart attack. Ida loses her voice and experiences more trauma-a rough cut of her experimental film has gone underground viral and unethical media agents are trying to hunt her down to buy the material. A chase ensues in which everyone wants what Ida's got.

Dora: A Headcase is a contemporary coming-of-age story based on Freud's famous case study-retold and revamped through Dora's point of view, with shotgun blasts of dark humor and sexual play. It's a ballsy book. Some have called it the femaleFight Club.