A novel about an ambitious Long Island girl filled with “pitch-perfect observations about adolescence, the suburbs, [and] the 1960s” (Meg Wolitzer, author of The Female Persuasion).
It is 1966, and fourteen-year-old Maude longs to escape Levittown. When she obtains a scholarship to a prestigious prep school, her parents do not approve. The Pughs are not a private school type of family. Having abandoned their Greenwich Village past, they now live in a house where the walls are painted black to better showcase the paintings of Maude’s self-absorbed father.
Maude is eager to enter the world of the Bay Farm School and its socially privileged students. She befriends a girl who lives on a nearby estate, entranced by her elegant lifestyle and envious of her mother’s easy affection. Yet her new friend is embarrassed by her wealth—and intrigued by the Pughs’ bohemian lifestyle.
Maude has tried to carefully construct a new life for herself. But as her family’s tensions and secrets threaten her plans, she may need to seek happiness elsewhere.
