Summer, 1970. Sex is very much on everyone's mind. The girls are acting like boys and the boys are going on acting like boys. Keith Nearing - a bookish twenty-year-old, in that much disputed territory between five foot six and five foot seven - is on holiday and struggling to twist feminism towards his own ends. Torn between three women, his scheming doesn't come off quite as he expects.
The third novel in Annie Murray's "Birmingham" series. While Genie's father is away fighting in World War II, her mother has a ruinous affair which leaves her pregnant; Genie's little brother leaves, never to return; while Genie herself meets a man who then disappears to war.