It is Baltimore in 1954 and everything is changing. In this year, school desegregation is happening for the first time, bringing black and white children from different neighborhoods into the same classrooms. In this year, the dawning of rock'n'roll is giving teenagers their first slice of a musical world that will become uniquely their own. In this year, the influx of automobiles becomes a powerful force in America, allowing people the mobility and privacy to travel at will--to see things right in their own hometown that were previously unknown to them. And in this year, the Kurtzman family developed a newly heightened understanding of what it means to be Jewish in a rapidly growing world in this story which examines the changing times of the mid-1950s and issues of race, class and religious distinction as seen through the eyes of a particular American family.