Watergate is breaking news, but at the Prairie Bluff boarding house in rural Illinois, there are more immediate concerns. Emma Bovary has arrived unannounced - and distraught - and Anne-Marie and her daughter Penny have torn themselves away from the television coverage to attend to their new guest. But if theres one rule at Prairie Bluff, its never meddle in the lives of the Heroines, however cruel the destinies to which they are bound. Theres nothing to be done for poor Emma, immersed in her narrative crisis, save for the provision of tea, a tirelessly sympathetic ear, and clean linens. Adolescent angst isnt a patch on beautiful and grief-stricken- and Penny, a moody thirteen, knows shes no competition for her mothers attentions against these ethereal creatures. Hurt and excluded, and frustrated by her mothers passivity in the face of Emmas terrible fate, Penny strikes out across the Prairie to cool her hot head. But when she arrives at the forbidden woods, shes in no mood to obey her mothers second rule, never to enter - and soon finds herself in a world of very real heroes and villains, an unwilling heroine in her very own terrifying story.