As Jessica Anya Blau’s latest novel starts, Mary Jane has just turned 14. She’s starting a summer job as a nanny of an endearing five-year-old, just a short walk from her own traditional home in Baltimore’s Roland Park. Mary Jane’s conservative parents think it’s great their daughter will be working for a doctor. They don’t yet know he’s a psychiatrist who has cleared his summer schedule to treat a recovering drug addict who’s a rock star … and whose movie-star wife will also spend the summer.
Blau says: “Mary Jane suddenly enters this world of chaos, confusion, rock and roll, group therapy, sex … everything is happening in this house. And it kind of changes her life.”
Coming of age. In Roland Park. In 1975.
