The series focuses on a young woman's attempts to discover the truth about her background after seeing her own image on a milk carton.
[1][2] While at lunch one day, Janie grabs a friend's milk carton, an action that will change her life.
Embarrassed at having nothing to talk about because he doesn't know a subject, Reeve begins discussing the story of Janie's kidnapping, meeting her new family, and returning to her adoptive parents.
The rest of the novel deals with Reeve's efforts to talk to Janie, though she continuously refuses because he sold her out on the air along with her biological and adoptive families.
When Pammy and Cordell suggest that he forgets about her and focus on getting a career as a professional radio disc jockey, Reeve is forced to return home to seek his parents' advice on what to do.
Janie finds a folder marked 'H.J' in her father's files and wants to read it by herself, but her brother Brian and Reeve want to be included.
Janie takes the longest to convince but eventually after she has a talk with Stephen she decides it would be best not to find Hannah, as it would be too painful for everyone.
The book also contains interludes describing the reasons why Hannah did what she did and how she lived between turning over Jennie to her parents and the present day.
and made into a for-television film called The Face on the Milk Carton, distributed by Fox Family (now Freeform), directed by Waris Hussein and starring Kellie Martin as Jennie/Janie.
For the film, Jennie/Janie's family names were changed, the biological to "Sands" and the adoptive to "Jessmon", while Jennie's twin brothers Brendan and Brian are omitted altogether.