Most parents seem embarrassing to their twelve-year-olds, but Ellen Gerson's are especially so. Ellen worries that her new seventh grade friends will find out her parents are active members of the Communist Party. Ellen understands little about her parents' ideology and busy lives, but this "red diaper baby" is confident she's loved. The national turbulence concerning personal freedom, political prejudice and the trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg is well re-created as are mundane details of girlhood in 1953.

Though pleased to be part of the "in" crowd at her new school, Ellen's growing awareness of her parents' social concerns, expressed in their support of the condemmed Rosenbergs, forces her to make a choice about what really matters in life.