Grady - beautiful, rich, flame-haired, defiant - is the sort of girl people stare at across a room. The daughter of an important man, who people want to be introduced to. A girl to whom people sense something is going to happen.
But the privileged society life of parties, debutantes and dresses leaves her wanting more than her parents and conventional sister Apple have in mind for her. Excitement comes in the form of the highly unsuitable Clyde, a Brooklyn-born, Jewish parking attendant. And when Grady's mother and father leave her alone for the first time in their New York penthouse one summer, their secret affair intensifies. As a heatwave envelops the city, Grady gets in deeper and deeper and cares less and less about the consequences. Soon, though, she will be forced to make decisions - choices that will forever affect her future once the long, sultry summer of 1945 comes to an end.
