His new wife, Kate, who is nineteen years younger than he is, has a three-year-old daughter named Muffin and an unnamed son called Baby Boy. There are conflicts, and Kammy's father and stepmother offer to send her to summer camp at Camp Arrowhead. Kamilla is reluctant but ends up going anyway.
The central character, Kamilla Whitlock, who is known as "Kammy" or "Kams" lives with her father, Robert Whitlock, and a housekeeper named Andrew Croswell, in a sleepy east coast town. Kammy's mother Annie died in a car crash when Kammy was four. Eight years later, her father has remarried.