The Heavenstone sisters live with their mother and father in a grand old mansion in bluegrass Kentucky. Semantha, the younger and prettier one, is afraid of so many things -- darkness, strange noises, mysterious whispers in the night. But nothing frightens her more than her sister, Cassie. She is older and wiser, and always telling Semantha what to do, what to wear, and how to behave around those wicked boys at school. Semantha has her eye on one...

An unhappy and overweight adolescent, April Taylor struggles to cope with the desertion and death of her father, the suicide of her mother, her new life with her lesbian sister, and her doubts about her own sexual orientation.