All Mitchell wants to do is survive middle school. Heck, that's all any kid wants when they're in middle school, especially for the students of King's Hollow, which may be the roughest school in town. When King's Hollow gets a new band director in the form of Mr. Undergrove, things start to turn around for Mitchell and his bandmates as they prepare for their 1st band competition and begin to experience an emotion they've never felt at school before: hope.
Told through two intersecting yet different timelines, Jazz tells the story of teenager Mitchell Williams as a middle schooler, as he deals with getting jumped in the locker room, preparing for a band competition, and meeting a girl with a possessive ex-boyfriend, and then as a high schooler, where Mitchell is faced with bickering bandmates, a school trip to New York City, and learning how to deal with a relationship gone wrong.
Jazz is a coming-of-age novel about a school jazz band, but it's also a novel about getting your heart broken, trying to fit in, teachers that don't understand teenagers, bullies, music, love, rejection, movies, and the wonder and awe of friendship, even when you're a band geek.