In 1968, a clerical mistake threatens the prestigious but cash-strapped Goode School in the small New England town of Cape Wilde. After a century of all-male, old-boy education, the school accidentally admits its first female student Carole Faust, a brilliant, outspoken, fifteen-year-old black girl whose arrival will have both an immediate and long-term effect on the prep school and everyone in its orbit. BRThere's the school's philandering headmaster, Goddard God Byrd, who had promised co-education over his dead body and who finds his syllabi full of dead white males and patriarchal tradition constantly challenged there's EV, the daughter of God's widowed mistress who watches Carole's actions as she grows older with wide eyes and admiration and, finally, there's Carole herself, who bears the singular challenge of being the First Girl in a world that's not quite ready to embrace her.