With a clinically depressed mother at home, isolated young Naomi Feinstein and her father often escape to 83 Beals, in Brookline, Massachusetts, otherwise known as the John F. Kennedy National Historic Site, where the glamorous former president and his parents once lived as a family. Now a museum, the house features preserved rooms with a red button that makes "Rose's smoothly nasal voice emerge from speakers on the ceiling" as well as antique rocking horses, oriental carpets and a piano—all of which become the furnishings of a dream home for Naomi, inspiring hopes of upper-class glamour and advancement. Fifteen years later, when she enrolls in Wellesley on a scholarship, she decides, "I would win, all the time, at everything." The loneliness she felt as child, however, isn't so easy to cure at an ultra-competitive women's college, and she takes refuge in the on-campus Shakespeare Society. In the eyes of her fellow type-A students, her move is akin to joining to the Animal House, complete with parties and members-only secrets. But in bonding with her fellow "Shakes," she begins to understand "how we all lived so full of fear" and how to make the kinds of choices that eventually lead to an uncommon but joy-filled life.
— Leigh Newman
