Kate Happy navigates the eccentricities of her grandparents' rural Herefordshire farm while grappling with the weight of her grandmother's unfulfilled longing for a life left behind in Brooklyn. As Kate matures in the early 1980s, she finds herself caught between the stifling, bizarre reality of her domestic life and the vibrant, idealized memories of America that her grandmother, Iris, clings to with fierce resentment. The narrative captures the friction between the mundane chores of farm life and the surreal, often volatile behavior of her grandparents, who are locked in a decades-long battle of wills. Through Kate's observant perspective, the story explores how family secrets and inherited histories shape the identity of a young woman coming of age in a landscape that feels entirely foreign to her desires.

This debut novel is characterized by its sharp, observational wit and its ability to balance domestic absurdity with a poignant sense of displacement. The narrative style suggests a focus on the idiosyncratic nature of family dynamics, where the mundane and the bizarre coexist within the confines of a rural estate. Readers likely find the portrayal of the grandmother, Iris, to be a central anchor for the story's tone, providing both comedic relief and a deeper layer of melancholy. The work appears to lean into the conventions of the coming-of-age genre while subverting them through its focus on the peculiar, often chaotic environment of the protagonist's upbringing.