It's 1962 and Natalie Marx is shocked when her mother receives this reply to her enquiry about summer accommodation in Vermont: 'Our guests who feel most comfortable here, and return year after year, are Gentiles.'

It was not complicated, as her mother pointed out. 'They had a hotel; they didn't want Jews. We were Jews.'

For the intrepid twelve-year-old Natalie, the words are an infuriating, irresistible challenge. She manages to wangle an invitation to join a friend on holiday there - and, as her obsession begins with the family that has excluded her, she sets in train events which will change her life, and which will tie her forever to the eccentric family who run the Inn at Lake Devine