On her first day at a new school, Lily befriends Eva and her sisters Beatrice and Heloise, daughters of the infamous avant-garde painter Evan Trentham. An only child from an unremarkable, working-class family, Lily has never experienced a household like the Trenthams' --- a community of like-minded artists Evan and his wife have created, all living and working together to escape the stifling conservatism of 1930s Australia. And Lily has never met anyone like Eva, whose unabashed confidence and worldly knowledge immediately draw her in. But as seductive as the artists' utopian vision appears, behind it lies both darkness and dysfunction. And the further the girls are pulled in, the greater the consequences become.