Fifteen-year-old Summer learns a great deal about life as she confronts the problems of impending adulthood. She has trouble understanding her nonconformist mother and misses her absentee father, to whom she frequently writes letters. Having nowhere to send these letters, Summer simply collects them.

Her male companion Nicky no longer enjoys their childhood games and now desires her sexually.

Oriole will never be ready for motherhood. Summer and Sparrow have different fathers, neither of whom has maintained contact with the family, and men continue to come in and out of Oriole's life frequently. Nevertheless, she dedicates all of her time to whomever she happens to love at the moment.

During the course of the novel her misplaced loyalties fall upon a drug dealer, and the Fishers and Oriole begin to grow marijuana in the greenhouses. In the end, Oriole realizes that her lack of...