This book follows the life of an ordinary American woman, Kate Parker, from her high-school years to her late twenties. Originally from the unfashionable middle class in an overlooked part of the country, through effort and ambition Kate Parker is able to attend a prestigious college in the east, where she meets the person who becomes her closest lifelong friend, Katie Leung. Kate Parker is drawn to Katie Leung, a child of immigrants, as, regardless of their academic readiness, they are both bewildered when faced with the daunting cultural advantages of their classmates. College completes Kate Parker's transformation into a provisional member of the upper middle class, though her modest income as a public school teacher in New York forces her to the relative margins of New York City, where she has settled. She eventually meets a man named Gardner Traxler, whose superficial attractiveness masks a lukewarm character. The birth of their son, Marlow, does nothing to cement their union. Kate is successful in her teaching career, but is conscious all the while of her outsider status. She settles uneasily into her life as a single mother in an apartment in Midwood, Brooklyn. Kate Parker's principal sends her to a symposium led by a semi-retired speculative financier named Hugh Worth who has taken an improbable but sincere interest in education reform. After a little hesitation, Kate succumbs to the attractions of Worth, and her life is transformed, to be sure. A Brief History of Kate Parker is the story of a woman in search of tranquility and belonging.