This story opens on Memorial Day weekend in a seaside town on Long Island, where Ruthie, her still-adored ex-husband Mike, and the couple's sullen fifteen year old daughter Jem are packing up the last bits of their household, awaiting the yearly arrival of a wealthy renter from Manhattan. It is what Jem calls "the summer bummer"; her parents own a beautiful house that they have renovated by hand from top to bottom, but which they secretly can only afford to keep by leasing it out during the best part of the year. Every year they must do this and every year it gets harder, amassing a pile-up of low-grade resentments from everyone in the family. And thus begins the summer when every possible thing that can go wrong in Ruthie's life seems to do so. Her relationship with Mike, who she lives in constant hope of rekindling, seems about to disappear for good. The job she loves, as the underpaid and undervalued director of the local arts museum, is under siege from a coterie of rich women from the city, who want to use it as an opportunity for social climbing. An old flame who once broke her heart and betrayed her is back on the scene, causing Ruthie to re-evaluate their romance, and in the midst of it all her teenage daughter Jem is possibly involved in a dangerous and destructive relationship of her own, a situation Ruthie may be discovering too late...