'The Inn at Lake Devine is a family-owned resort, which has been in continuous operation since 1922. Our guests who feel most comfortable here, and return year after year, are Gentiles.'
It's 1962 and all across America barriers are collapsing. Except in Vermont, where Natalie Marx's mother's inquiry about summer accommodation elicits this extraordinary reply. Twelve-year-old Natalie Marx is stunned to discover the Inn at Lake Devine in Vermont is a hotel operating an anti-semitic policy.
With her stubborn sense of justice, the words are not a rebuff but an infuriating, irresistible challenge. She becomes obsessed with the Inn and the family that owns it, and finagles an invitation to join a friend on vacation there. In this way she sets herself on a path that will inextricably link her adult life to this peculiar family and their once-restricted hotel.