The Atlas school district, located in
a Midwestern university town, has 52 schools that serve approximately 34,000 students — 22 % minority and 38 % of receiving free or reducedprice lunches.
As the United States begins gearing up for war in the Middle East, twenty - year - old Tassie Keltjin, the
Midwestern daughter of a gentleman hill farmer — his «Keltjin potatoes» are justifiably famous — has come to a
university town as a college student, her brain on fire with Chaucer, Sylvia Plath, Simone de Beauvoir.