Evie Spooner Timeline and Summary

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• Evie is in New York hanging out with her best friend Margie when she sees her crush walking down the street with Ruthie, a Jewish girl. Margie makes fun of Ruthie, but Evie feels uncomfortable about the whole situation.
• Upon arriving at home, she finds that her mom and Grandma Glad (her stepdad's mom) are fighting again. Joe gets home and tells Evie and her mom that they're going on a vacation to Palm Beach. Yippee.
• They all drive down to Palm Beach. It's the off-season, so they only find one hotel that is open and get settled in.
• Evie mostly hangs out by herself at the hotel and on the beach while her parents spend time with their new friends, the Graysons.
• One day, Evie sees a dance going on and gets dressed up to crash it. Only one boy—the hotel bellhop, Wally—asks her to dance though, and she turns him down.
• She goes out to the pool and meets Peter Coleridge, a handsome young man. She's immediately smitten by him.
• The next morning, Evie introduces Peter to her parents. Joe seems to know him from the war, but they don't really talk about that.
• Over the next few weeks, Evie grows increasingly drawn to Peter and is convinced that they're carrying on some kind of romance—after all, he even kisses her once. Her mom usually comes along to chaperone them.
• Evie doesn't know why Joe doesn't want her to hang out with Peter, but she and her mom make a silent pact not to tell him that they're going on rides with Peter every single day.
• Eventually, Evie starts dressing in a more grown-up way to get Peter's attention. She thinks that she's falling in love with him.
• One day, she finds out that Joe is planning to buy the hotel with Mr. Grayson. This sounds like good news to Evie, but everyone else—including her mom—seems tense about it.
• At the celebration dinner for the deal, Evie tries to get Peter's attention but he's more focused on Joe; at one point, he calls Joe a dirty rat and Joe punches him.
• When they return to the hotel, there's more bad news. Evie watches the hotel manager throw the Graysons out because they are Jewish. She can't believe a thing like this would happen.
• Evie runs over to where Peter is staying and finds him in a boarded-up house; he says that he's staying there because it's a friend's house.
• She tells him what happened with the Graysons and how she doesn't understand it at all. He confesses to her that he followed her family here because he and Joe stole some gold together in the war, and now Joe won't give him his fair cut.
• Evie tells Joe that she absolves him for stealing the gold in the war, and then she starts to kiss him. This quickly becomes… something a little more scandalous. But it's all stopped when Evie's mom shows up, and demands that Evie come back to the hotel with her.
• The next day, Evie is at breakfast with her parents when Peter walks in. Joe announces that he's taking Evie's mom and Peter boating—Evie's going to stay at home.
• Evie hangs out at the hotel and runs into Wally, who she decides to seduce in order to get some sexual practice—at the last minute, though, she decides to stop and shoves him away. Wally still gets fired for consorting with a guest.
• Evie's parents don't return when they say they will, and she learns that a hurricane is coming; along with everyone else in Palm Beach, Evie is evacuated.
• After the hurricane has blown over, Evie's parents are found—but it appears that Peter is missing and presumed dead. Evie is absolutely devastated. Her first love is gone.
• Things get even worse when it turns out that Joe and Evie's mom are suspected of murdering Peter. Evie also learns that her mom was carrying on an affair with Peter this whole time; could that (combined with Joe's money issues) be reason enough for a murder?
• At the trial, all the evidence suggests that Joe and Evie's mom were involved in Peter's death—especially when Wally testifies that he saw Peter with Evie's mom.
• Evie has to make a decision about whether to save her family—even though she's furious with her parents—and she ultimately choses to testify that she was the one who was having an affair with Peter, not her mom.
• Thanks to Evie's testimony, Joe and her mom get off and they all go back to New York to resume their "normal" lives.
• When Evie returns, she takes the rest of Joe's money and goes to give it to Mrs. Grayson so that she can use it for Jewish families affected in the war. It's only the right thing to do, after all.