Although Matt Moran's story begins at his family's lakeside cottage during the summer before Dory's tragic death, the bulk of the narrative covers the period from Dory's funeral in March to the close of the school year and is largely set in Glenburnie, a northwest suburb of Chicago in the 1970s. This is a realistically drawn world of freeways, upper-class neighborhoods enclosed behind stone gateways, high schools with large parking lots, apartment complexes with names like "Camelot Close," shopping malls, and decaying downtown store fronts. Matt's perceptions show a decided preference for the small farm town Glenburnie where his grandparents grew up, and a distinct awareness of class contrasts, chiefly those between the apartment where he lives with his working-class father and stepmother and the spacious homes, lawns, and golf greens of Glenburnie Woods.

Contrasting with all this is the cottage on Juniper Lake, a location for love...