It is summer, 1968. When Les was really little, they played the Star Spangled Banner in movie theaters; she could feel her chest ripple just like the flag on the screen. But it is summer, 1968--Martin Luther King Jr. shot in April and, in June, Bobby Kennedy. "What in the world is happening to this country?" everyone on TV cries, and Les wonders what she, a kid, a girl on the cusp of becoming a teenager, can do about any of it. Other than hold firm to the idea that if people were only just nice enough, the world would somehow work. Though, in the meantime, she would also like to be just a little more cool-- Her teenage brother, Arne, lives his own story that summer as he struggles against the squeeze of suburban family life and the escalating Vietnam War. But "what in the world is happening?" he wonders as he sees his sister changing, his sister who has always been the nice one. Their story, of abuse and its aftermath, traverses the landscape of country, family, heart."