In 1923 ten million families own the Model T, America's most popular automobile. Ziegfeld Follies comes into its heyday and jazz reigns as king of music. This is the time when prohibition dominates social gatherings, and F. Scott Fitzgerald becomes the Flapper expert. Younger women all over the country shun having to wear corsets and trailing Victorian dresses like their mothers. These ladies rebel against waist-length braids in favor of the right to bob their locks. They argue for free speech and equality, beg to wear lipstick, and on occasion, show their knees.

When college-bound Kathleen McPherson, in Minneapolis, pushes her family's traditional boundaries, she's horrified to discover a stalker intent on killing her. A classmate, whose romantic life seems to parallel Kathleen's, is stabbed to death near Kathleen's home. Gossip implies the murdered girl carried on with an older man.

Kathleen and her best friend run away to Chicago to escape the knife-wielding stalker and to find happiness as Flappers. Instead of an entertainer's life full of fun and frolic, Kathleen encounters deception, death, heartbreak, and revenge. Not only does the stalker continue to pursue her, but she must rescue her best friend from gangsters and escape being murdered by the mob.