Helen Majinsky is sixteen, Jewish and confused. She is also in love - like every Merseyside schoolgirl - with four mop-topped young men, seduced by the Cavern Club and the exciting sound of 1963. In the year The Beatles have the world at their feet, Helen dreams secretly of reaching university and leaving Liverpool. Her Liverpool. Her world. For a grammar school girl to even consider a future outside the city is to break taboos stronger than the Mersey undertow, and as the prospect of a place at Oxbridge shimmers into view, Helen knows she is restrained by the very forces of stability she longs to escape. But when love intervenes - with Michael Levison, a locally stationed US serviceman - Helen finds the means to break the chains of the old life, and her guide through the hidden dangers of the new...