Rose Campbell is having a hard time adjusting to her new life. Recently orphaned, she has been swept away from a strict girls' boarding school and placed in the care of her six aunts and seven rowdy male cousins. When her guardian, Uncle Alec, returns from abroad, things are about to change once more. To her aunts' alarm Alec has different ideas of what it means to raise a girl than most, but his unconventional approach might just be what gets Rose out of her shell. Just as author Louisa May Alcott's widely-read novel Little Women (1868), Eight Cousins (1875) is unusually forward-thinking and feminist for its time.