en we got there that summer of 1956. We had to cross the canal at Buzzards Bay over the only other roadway that tethered Cape Cod to the mainland.Thus twelve-year-old Lily Grainger, while safe from 'communists and the Pope, ' finds her family suddenly adrift. That was the summer the Andrea Doria sank, pilot whales stranded, and Lily's father built a house he couldn't afford. Target practice on a nearby decommissioned Liberty Ship echoed not only the rancor in her parents' marriage, a rancor stoked by Lily's competitive uncle, but also Lily's troubles with her sister, her cousins, and especially with her mother.