In the long hot summers of the 1950s, in the kingdom of inland seas that is Upper Canada, three girls share their adolescent secrets and dreams. The rules of contest are the only ones they know as they vie for one godlike boy. They are Shelly, vulnerable, childlike, boastful, possessive. Bobby, flamboyant, generous, rebellious, queening it with her sexuality. and Jude, the intellectual, who writes poetry and erotic fantasy and prays to Mrs. God to make her more than an observer of life. When they meet again in the summer land of speedboats and private islands, their childhood crudity has become adult decadence, and beneath the languorous social trivia are fear, lust, frantic love. And a trick played ten years before returns to wreak havoc in all their hearts as the world around seems on the verge of cataclysm.