Lou Connor, a precocious, gifted, and unhappy sixteen-year-old, is offered a place as an exchange student in the United States, something that she hopes will take her far away from her bleak life of poverty in Sydney, Australia. But soon after she moves in with her host family, the Hardings--who live in a prefabricated mansion in a Chicago suburb--Lou's acute need for acceptance and love runs up against the Hardings' suffocating pursuit of a particular form of suburban perfection.