It's 1963, and fifteen-year-old Michael is spending the summer in the usual place: his family's New England beach house. This isn't a summer like the others, though. This is the summer he falls in love with the girl next door, twenty-year-old Zina. This is the summer he begins to understand the difference between what adults say and what they really mean. This is the summer he finds himself betrayed and learns in his turn to betray. This is the summer his life falls apart.

This devastating coming-of-age story, inspired by Ivan Turgenev's classic novel First Love, is a witty, elegiac masterpiece, which captures all the booze-soaked, salt-brined atmosphere of America's last summer of innocence.