The scene is a small town in Maine in the 1950s. Louisa Fisher, called "Fish" by her friends, yearns for true love. She also wants to be a writer, hoping for a bestseller before she is twenty. Unnerved by the boys at school with their leering question "What Do Cowboys Like?", Fish is afraid to show ignorance and makes up for it with fanciful flights of prose in the novel she is secretly penning.