Up the Downside

In the turbulent backdrop of 1967, with French revolutionaries aimed at separating her Quebec from Canada, Maureen Wallner, only seventeen, is grappling with a world in upheaval. As the not-so-good girl anymore from an embattled family in a live-for-today Beatles-infused era, she meets a determined American from New York with dreams to be a doctor without the grades to enter med school.

Fast forward to 1969, disillusioned, wary of love and marriage, Maureen marries Harry and follows him to Belgium-to her a dreary Neverland. Struggling to adapt to being the foreigner in what is shrouded in perpetual gray and inhabited by stoic, trench-coated beings, she confronts new harsh realities of life. With no job prospects, pressured with passing once-a-year exams in Flemish, and Vietnam claiming more and more Americans, she finds herself isolated, waiting for Harry's dream to materialize while grappling with her own identity.