Recovery high schools have become a key setting supporting the adolescent recovery process over the last fifty years. Salvaging a Teenage Wasteland provides the first major historical account of the recovery high school movement from its beginnings in the alternative schools of the 1970s that overlapped with the first adolescent substance use treatment programs.

Our understanding of recovery high schools has evolved along with our understanding of addiction and recovery themselves. Finch explores the development of the earliest programs in South Carolina, Texas, Maryland, and Minnesota, which served as roots for later growth. He compiles interviews from dozens of pioneers, including early administrators, teachers, and students, and reviewed hundreds of historical artifacts to trace the creation and expansion of recovery high schools. The story that emerged was closely connected to some of the major events of the times, from the counterculture movement of the 1960s, to the Drug War and advent of adolescent treatment in the 1970s, to the anti-drug campaigns of the 1980s, such as "Just Say No".

Cultural touchstones such as Woodstock, school desegregation, high school drug raids, and fear of cults and teenage drug use figured prominently in the creation of recovery high schools, all in an effort to create sober school spaces for teenagers. The programs that evolved are now one of the major components of addressing adolescent mental health and substance use issues.