Lindsey Crittenden

Robin, aged nine, is visiting the LA suburbs with her parents and asthmatic brother. It's July 1969, the smog is awful, the parents drink all day, and the astronauts are about to land....

Kit and Jeff move to the coastal town of Bodega Boy when he gets a postdoc fellowship at a marine lab. As a grant deadline looms at Jeff's lab, Kit begins pursuing her own professional interests....

When her alcoholic father leaves home abruptly, Jamie, a fourth-grade spelling whiz, blames her mother. By channeling her confusion and sorrow into a fixation with spelling....