Budding economist Cynthia Proctor knows everything there is to know about statistical impossibilities. In 1954, women like her from middle class families do not earn degrees from prestigious New England colleges. Zero is the number of women on faculty. When Cynthia receives notice that her scholarship program prefers to fund the education of male students next year, she knows her chances of graduating are almost non-existent.

Enter an extraneous variable: an invitation to spend the summer lakeside in Maine, mingling with her wealthy roommates' social set. But Cynthia has other ideas. When she learns of a summer job at Elizabeth Arden's Maine Chance Spa, Cynthia can feel her chances of funding her education increasing. Hired as a maid, she is thrust into a real-life lesson in economics. Her teachers hail from upstairs and downstairs: a fabulously eccentric local artist, the resident housekeeper whose family sold their land to Arden in the Depression, the summer people whose favor Cynthia's mother so desires, and an enigmatic chauffeur who challenges Cynthia to reevaluate her most valued assets. By summer's end, in the glow of Elizabeth Arden's idyllic health and beauty resort, a young woman will learn the most important lesson of all: that her best investment is in herself.