School is out in the summer of 1925 in Dayton Tennessee. For Frances Robinson a fifteen-year-old daydreamer with a crush on her teacher John T. Scopes summer vacation promises tennis and Coca-Colas from her father's drug store. But when Frances's father the school board chairman has Scopes arrested for teaching evolution the sleepiest place on earth becomes a hotbed for famous thinkers including H. L. Mencken Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan. Overnight the world is flocking to Dayton to decide: Are people really descended from monkeys? Does the theory of evolution have a place in biology class? As Frances sees the man she loves crumbling beside her she begins to question her town her neighbors and the father she has always trusted.
