Lisa is a twelve-year-old girl with all the worries and troubles and angst of any normal girl just beginning the slow transition into womanhood. Her mother is gone, so she has only her father—a man who doesn't really know how to talk to a young girl about personal things—to advise her.

She's frightened at the changes that are happening to her body—the budding breasts, the hint of a menstrual cycle, the still black hairs that appear on the back of her hands, and the way her nails twist to look like claws during the full moon. Is this normal? And if not, how is she different, why is she different, and why doesn't her dad want her to go to the harvest moon dance?