As an adolescent, Elizabeth Taube is shy and chubby. She escapes her remote parents and the antiseptic atmosphere of her too-perfect Long Island home in books and by stealing from the local five-and-dime. But as she matures she discovers a smoldering sensuality and an overwhelming urge to love and be loved. The first person she bestows her love on is the middle-aged furrier Mr. Klein, who sees in her all the beauty her parents have never noticed. Later there is Mrs. Hill, the elderly woman she cares for and who comes to mean more to her than her own family. And then there is Max Stone, forty-nine years old and father of three, for whom Elizabeth becomes an adored but finally unobtainable obsession. When Elizabeth meets Huddie Lester, star player on her high school basketball team, she is finally ready for adult love, and their urgent passion takes them far past the point their families, and their world, find acceptable. Huddie and Elizabeth are separated; but the passing years eventually point the way toward a tenuous resolution.