In 1986, ten-year-old Tate Millikin is uprooted from the big city and unwillingly moved to the suburbs of Kansas City, where he is forced to spend a lonely summer bearing witness to his parents’ disintegrating marriage. Tate ends up befriending his new next-door neighbors - recently retired English professor, Edward Bryant and his transgender daughter, Gossamer. Despite his father’s knee-jerk transphobia and his mother’s misplaced protectiveness, Tate forms a deep friendship with fellow misfit Gossamer, that changes his life and the lives of their families.