"Large Marge Bickford, 'Butt too big, boobs too small…generation XL', navigates the halls of her high school and the chalked lines of its soccer field with the same sense of failure and dread. This is not a happy kid. Marge is most often alone but not necessarily lonely, just resigned. Life is passing her by and she doesn’t seem to mind…until the death of her nearly perfect Mom. Marge refuses to move to Arizona to live with her ultra-conservative...

To help her fall asleep, the author tells his daughter a bedtime story from his mischievous childhood when he bought magic beans with his mother's grocery money.