In a small Midwest town at the end of World War II, the Rubinson girls are governed by the strict unwritten rules of their time and place, although Peggy, the younger sister, steals from Victory Gardens, guiltily shoplifts her family's Christmas presents, hopes someone tall will ask her for a date, and befriends a girl whose family has escaped the Holocaust. Her life is suddenly changed by a disaster to her beautiful, beloved older sister, and both of them need to keep secrets from everyone, even themselves.

This is a story of two sisters, in the 1940's, the time historians say when we lost our innocence.The story ranges from a small Midwest town to New York and a hard-working farm in Minnesota. The sisters follow all the rules for "nice" girls but those rules fail to protect the older sister, a beautiful high school homecoming queen. Both sisters have secret lives what would destroy them if they were known, and the girls must make peace with those secrets as they come of age.