Three college friends from the 50s blaze their own path in love and work, braving the stifling conventions of the age, and anticipating the social thaw that would arrive ten years later. These wild girls pay heavy penalties for living against the grain, but, over the years, rebound and re-set their course, drawing strength from their friendship. Th e novel follows them from an elite northeastern college, to Paris with Allen Ginsberg, to New York's avant-garde scene in the early sixties, to a mansion in Newport, to the slopes of Zermatt , to Long Island's Gold Coast, as it celebrates the nimbleness and vitality of women who defied an entire culture to forge their own journey.