Carlin Leander is the centrifugal force of the story, which begins with her arrival at the Haddan school and ends with her swimming the lengths of the Haddan river, symbolically swallowing her indecision and choosing to navigate her life through the town. Carlin's life, and the decisions she makes, touch on every other character in the novel. She is precocious far beyond her fifteen years, wizened by events that stream through her life in her freshman year at the conservative New England prep school where she has earned a swimming scholarship.

From the outset, the reader learns that she is a headstrong and beautiful, fitting all of the cliched descriptions of a romance novel heroine: she is poor, disheveled but strikingly beautiful, stubborn, unlearned in love, and talented. And just as in all the classic romance tales, Carlin is soon to be involved in a love triangle, although...