At 13, Cosi McCarthy wants what every girl in Buffalo wants in the 1960s—to become a happy wife and loving mother. But that dream collapses when her father dies, ugly family secrets emerge, and her widowed mother is trapped in the double standards of a patriarchal culture and impoverished by the city's failing economy. Swept up in the idealism of youth, Cosi soon learns how hard it is to save the world, and that love is easy to mistake when you have no idea what it looks like.