1900: Anna Bradley spends summer days supervising three little girls, including her niece, Julia Demarest, on an island off the coast of Haven Point, Maine. There, the girls run free, pretending to be all the things society says they cannot. A college graduate determined to remain unmarried, Anna is eager to establish herself independently. Inspired by the summer antics of Julia and her friends, Anna writes "Liberty Island" a depiction of girls unshackled from the domestic sphere, under a pen name. Young readers are rhapsodic, and it is a runaway bestseller, but it's not well received by the society matrons in her sister's circle, who believe that books for girls should prepare them for their future as wives and mothers.
1922: Julia Demarest was once proud of her aunt's "Liberty Island" books. But as new, bohemian ideas take hold amongst her peers, she has come to see them as quaint, at best. In hindsight, her childhood summers on the island seem like more of an exile than a liberation. But in an effort to break free of expectations, she has ended up alienated from her family and heartbroken when a romantic entanglement with a free-spirited intellectual ends badly. Urgently called back to Haven Point, Julia is confronted by all the things she's been trying to escape, and forced to reconsider what truly brings her happiness. |
