A teenage girl spends a summer sitting on a swing and reading. Her mother tells her that she should work on doing the things that women are supposed to do, like cleaning. Her father tells her to use her beauty and go out and about. Her best friend tries to set her up on dates. The girl refuses to listen, and she reads her way into her seventeenth year, exploring stories of teen mothers and jailed sons and lovelorn soldiers. When she eventually rejoins the world, she finds her words unimportant, so much so that she doesn’t even listen to herself sometimes.