A fifteen-year-old who lives with her mother, an ardent feminist, in a women's commune begins to discover how others live when she visits her father, a successful architect, for the first time.
Ji-su, sad when her mother is summoned to be a seamstress at the palace of the Korean king, spends a year perfecting her own skills, hoping she too will be chosen to sew for the king, and be reunited with her mother.
Erin's mother is seeing a mysterious man, who is supposed to be an old friend of the family. The only person in which Erin can confide is her friend Dorrie-- but Dorris is a letter away.
Struggling to deal with her father's death, the impending sale of the boat that has been her home for six years, anger toward her mother, and her own guilt, fourteen-year-old Molly decides to sail by herself to Tahiti.