"In the marshy, misty countryside of southwestern France, fourteen-year-old Galla rides her battered bicycle from the private Catholic high school she attends on scholarship to the rocky, barren farm where her family lives. It's a journey she makes every two weeks, forty miles round trip, traveling between opposite poles of ambition and guilt, school and home. Galla's loving, overwhelmed, incompetent mother doesn't want her to go to school; she wants...

When Mandie is sent to Miss Heathwood's Boarding School for Girls, she finds herself unable to keep up with all of the new rules and regulations suddenly present in her life, and is constantly getting into trouble as a result. One day, she sneaks into the school's forbidden attic and discovers a secret that may unlock the mystery of why Miss Heathwood doesn't like Christmas.