In the seemingly endless small-town summer of 1968, a twelve-year-old girl contemplates with dread the social prospects of her fast-approaching enrollment in a class for gifted students at the local high school, arranged by her mother who "blows up" at the drop of a hat--she doesn't intend to let her daughter marry "the first man to come along," and she is prepared to do anything to make sure her children don't grow up "ignorant," like Judith's sister,...