In the early 1980s, 13-year-old Beatrice Gravel's comfortable world—family, school, and church—fractures when her mother moves out to 'self actualize', leaving Beatrice and her younger sister Chloe with their devastated father. As Beatrice doubles down on a plan to 'fix' her family, she barrels through bullies, friendship blowups, a make-out party, and a kleptomaniac babysitter—forcing her to decide who she wants to be when she can’t get what she wants.

It's 1986, Shannon Crane means to be bound for a future she cannot know, on a day filled with possibility and hope. In her 7th grade class, Shannon has to reckon with the ordinary calamity of being herself after a simultaneous incident of being bullied, is caught between the extraordinary catastrophic event of the space challenger disaster, leaving a debris of searching, questioning.

Enigmatic storyteller Arthur Bank befriends a newspaper magnate to rise to public acclaim and run for politics while outrunning his past.