Blue van Meer’s father is an itinerant college professor who lands post after post at third-tier universities (Dodson-Miner College, University of Missouri at Archer, Hicksburg State College) all over the country. “Home” is a shaky concept for her: “Naturally, for me, the idea of a Permanent Home (the definition of which I took to be any shelter Dad and I inhabited in excess of ninety days—the time an American cockroach could go without food) was nothing more than a Pipe Dream…” For her senior year in high school, however, her dad springs a surprise: they would be staying the entire year in one place. Her entire senior year would be spent at the prestigious St. Gallway School in Stockton, North Carolina.

Blue’s narrative of her time at St. Gallway is her attempt to understand the hanging death of a St. Gallway teacher, Hannah Schneider. Almost immediately up arrival in Stockton, Blue becomes part of a group of students who meet regularly at Hannah’s home for supper. Blue doesn’t exactly fit in with this group, nor do they take quickly to her, but they become her cohort, for good or ill.

Hannah is an enigma. Immensely charismatic, she is trustworthy and together at times, shifty and rattled at others. Something doesn’t add up, and Blue and the other students speculate at length about what she may or may not be hiding of her past.

Somewhat less enigmatic, or at least more consistently inconsistent, is Blue’s father. Made a widower when Blue was quite young, he travels from affair to affair as regularly as he changes jobs. Despite (or perhaps even because of) her inability to explain her father’s wanderlust, Blue adores her father and life in the academy.

The real star, however, is Blue and her quirky, charming narrative. Blue’s father has overseen her education, ensuring that she is widely read. Her narrative is full of textual notes, comparing people and situations she encounters to books she’s read. Her book learning is both her strength and her bane: she has a wide impression of the world, but it’s a sane world, full of rational beginnings and well-argued ends. She comes to age finding some of the limits of truth and rationality.