Just before spending her sixteenth summer on Cape Cod, Sarah's boyfriend breaks up with her and, as a scientist whose focus is on winning a scholarship through her study of a comet, she designs an experiment to become more like her older sister to see if she, too, can be popular.

Alice Cole spent her first seven years living in two smoky, crowded rooms in London with her family. But a new home and a better life waited in the colonies, or so her father promised--a bright dream that turned to ashes when her brothers and mother took ill and died during the arduous voyage. Arriving in colonial New England unable to meet the added expenses incurred by their misfortunes at sea, her father bound Alice into servitude to pay his debts....