Sixteen-year-old Lorena is a science nerd at a time when girls don't do science. It's 1962 and the message from President Kennedy's Committee on the Status of Women isn't well received in her conservative community. Lorena plays the roles expected of a good girl. She's Lorena to her teachers, Lor to her friends, and Reenie to her Dad. She can't make her parents understand why she doesn't want the traditional role of teacher, nurse, or secretary like her older two sisters do. Her cousin Ronnie understands her dreams, but her best friend Carly is so confident of Lor's abilities in science, band, school, and life that she doesn't really listen to Lor's worries. Then Lorena's home burns and Carly gets sent to Oklahoma to help an elderly aunt. Carly has an emergency appendectomy - except community gossip says something else, something too awful to name. Lor deals with so many crises she's about to give up on her dream when help comes from a totally unexpected source. Never in her wildest imagination would she have predicted the end of the crazy, rad summer of 1962.