Teenager Beth Canfield would like to meet a nice boy, lead a fulfilling private life, and love her parents, Robert and Harriet. But she loathes her father's dinnertime political talk, and bursts into tears when he becomes governor of California. By the time she's ready for college, Beth feels estranged from both her parents, whose goal is to live in the White House. She demonstrates against the Vietnam War they support and shocks them by smoking marijuana. As Beth tries to rescue her friend Greg, a scarred Vietnam vet, from his self-imposed exile, Governor Canfield makes a bid for the presidency. And family tension mounts. Finally, Beth must make an agonizing choice: between her very fragile sense of self and her sense of the woman she desires to become. --Book jacket.