It is a sunlit morning in May when Andrew Miller arrives from rural Kansas to Coolidge Corner, an iconic urban village on the edge of Boston. Although he has been warned by his aunt that Bostonians are not very welcoming to outsiders, Andrew still has high hopes that his new home and job at the Brookline Library will be exactly what he is looking for--change.

Andrew, who possesses amazing talents as well as equally troublesome emotional handicaps, hopes to forget everything that has happened back home in Kansas as he secures a room in a boarding house and begins navigating life in...