Set in the 1960s, the story follows teenage Maude from her middle-class home in Levittown to the tony private-school precincts of Bay Farm. There she befriends the fabulously wealthy and cheerfully ironic Weesie, whose mother will become a private student of Maude's father, the semi-celebrated artist Milton Pugh. Something of a pill, Milton has alienated his son, Seth, who has disappeared, and drives his wife, Nina, into a relationship with a Bay Farm art teacher.