This is the true story of an imaginative and courageous young girl who was born behind, and married above, her family's furniture in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. The era is 1920s to World War II. She has an unending desire to escape its environment no matter what the cost. Jeanie encounters many adventures in her early years through her street friends in Part 1, and finally succumbs to her liberator, a handsome older counselor in an elite summer camp in Part 2. In 1942, despite conventional wisdom, an underage bride and an AWOL fighter pilot tie the knot as the Domestic Relations Act of New York State is waived.