[1] The summer of 1960 is a season that the novel's narrator and protagonist, 11-almost-12-year-old Hattie Owen, expects to be as comfortably uneventful as all the others had been in her small, tranquil town of Millerton, Pennsylvania.

She's looking forward to helping her mother Dorothy run their boarding house with its eccentric adult boarders, painting alongside her father Jonathan, and reading.

Adam quickly becomes smitten with Angel Valentine, the beautiful and most recent lodger to check into the Owen boardinghouse.

Throughout the summer, other people come to stay at Hattie's boarding house, such as a woman, Mrs. Strowsky, with a son Sam and daughter Catherine.

She recently suffered the death of her husband and moved away, but needed a place to stay while job hunting.

The book ends with Hattie turning off a film of Adam, and she realizes he revealed a corner of her Universe.

Jonathan Owen: Hattie's father and an artist who helps run the family boarding house.