"A moving portrait of a young woman's struggle to break free from her upper-class upbringing amid the whirlwind years of the sexual revolution"-- It's the mid-1950s and Margot Thornsen is growing up between a Park Avenue apartment in New York and her family's sumptuous Oyster Bay estate as the presumed heir to her late grandfather's steel fortune. Her domineering mother has charted a course for her--to forego education and marry well--but Margot is more interested in microscopes and beetles and books. When a devastating fire brings the family legacy crashing down and the sexual revolution dawns, a new path opens up--the expansive world of late-1960s Radcliffe College and the intellectual, cultural, and sexual freedom Margot has been reaching for.