"The beautiful child of older parents, raised on the eastern end of Long Island among the summer houses of the rich, Theresa is the town's most sought-after babysitter - cheerful, poised, an effortless storyteller, a wonder with children and animals - but also a solitary soul already attuned to the paradoxes and compromises of adult life.

Among her charges this fateful summer is Daisy, her younger cousin, who has left a crowded working-class household in the city to spend a few quiet weeks in this bucolic place, under Theresa's benevolent eye.".

"While Theresa copes with the challenge presented by the neighborhood's waiflike children, the tumultuous households of her employers, the mysteriously compelling attentions of an aging painter, and Daisy's fragility of body and spirit, her precocious, tongue-in-cheek sense of order is put to the test as she makes the perilous crossing into adulthood."--BOOK JACKET.