It is summer, 1961, and Lila Lee Bayliss, motherless since birth and now 13, doesn't quite know what to make of Nora Findlay. Nora smokes, swears, wears short shorts, and when she listens, she looks at you as if she's never heard a human voice before. She also laughs a lot, something that's been missing for a long time in the Bayliss household, and she seems to have done just about everything fun there is to do in the world. Soon, even Lila's somber father is humming while he shaves. When Nora takes a teaching job at the local high school, it seems like she might stay on in Lytton forever, despite her outlandish ways and the snide comments made about her by some of the neighbors. As time foes on, Lila begins to realize that underneath Nora's high-spirited, feisty faȧde, something is troubling her, something from her past. And though Nora has tried to run away from the life she had before, a secret follows her, on that is so shocking, it will stun the residents of this small, segregated town and forever change the life of young Lila.