Imaginative, emotionally sensitive, and hard working, Sara Louise Bradshaw, a young girl growing up on an isolated fishing island off the coast of Maryland during WWII, is made to feel second-best from the moment of her birth. Her impoverished family consists of her rough but gentle father, always absent due to his working-class job on his oyster boat; her ladylike and intelligent mother, who had arrived on the island as a school teacher and stayed after falling in love; her grandmother, a bitter and nasty woman with a religious bent; and Caroline, Sara Louise's younger twin sister who is the main impediment of Sara Louise's struggle to distinguish herself and obtain the affection she craves. Caroline is fragile, beautiful, and admired—everything Sara Louise is not.