'Its gone, the dam is gone, I can't believe it. It just broke, and all that water...' Michael sat down heavily on the steps and started to cry.

Sarah Green knows her place. She's a hard worker born of hard-working parents and married to an honest, blue-collar man who loves her. It is no surprise to those who know her when she is hired by one of Philadelphia's richest--and most eccentric--families as their first maid. Sarah has complete confidence she can sew, cook, and clean, but can she handle the other responsibilities her new employers, Wesley and Eloise Danvers, request of her?

Confidant. Counselor. Friend. Whenever Eloise gains an inch, earning a bit more of Sarah's trust and friendship, she takes a mile. Before Sarah has fully acclimated to being friends with her employer, she and her family are spending summers at an exclusive club as members with the Danverses! The summers are uncomfortable for Sarah as she struggles to make nice with Philadelphia's richest matrons and watches her only daughter interact with their daughters and sons. The Danverses brush off her worries, insisting that they love the Greens and their friends do too. Not until an act of man and nature strikes do the Greens and Danverses see the social divide for what it is and are faced with the challenge of breaching it in the Summer of Gold and Water.