Hav­ing grown up on sto­ries of her mother’s wild youth in Cal­i­for­nia, Ele­na Berg relo­cat­ed from New Eng­land to the Bay Area in 2011 for a place­ment as an Eng­lish teacher with Teach for Amer­i­ca. Once there, she is eager to inspire a love of poet­ry and lit­er­a­ture in her stu­dents. Her own grand­fa­ther — a Holo­caust sur­vivor — was a sto­ry­teller and teacher who touched the lives of his stu­dents for years to come.

But Ele­na quick­ly finds her­self feel­ing dis­con­nect­ed from teach­ing, unable to inspire her stu­dents, and before long, she grows dis­il­lu­sioned with her career. She tran­si­tions to a role in an edu­ca­tion tech­nol­o­gy start­up — though she ques­tions her deci­sion, her moti­va­tions, and her val­ues.

Com­ing of age between the Occu­py and #MeToo move­ments and against the back­drop of the 2016 elec­tion and California’s ever-wors­en­ing fire sea­son, Ele­na reck­ons with Cal­i­for­nia as she imag­ined it and Cal­i­for­nia as it real­ly is. As she does so, she must also ulti­mate­ly rec­on­cile the per­son she envi­sioned her­self to be with the per­son she actu­al­ly is.