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Candy, Hope, and Theda are three high school seniors enamored with a fledgling rock band at their school in the late sixties. Candy is bookish, Hope an aspiring model, with Theda devoted to acting and theater, but all three learn to subdue their career aspirations if they hope to move beyond "groupie" status and enter deeper relationships with the boys in the band. In college, an academically sponsored trip to London turns instead into a happenstance jam session with one of the last musicians signed with Apple Records, the music business failure founded by the Beatles. The Vietnam war hangs over everything, and even helps propel the young men, who are essentially dropping out from college, to find refuge with a strange Scottish guru. He "weds" the three girls and boys right before their return to California, where they somehow wind up starring at a huge music festival.
Told from each girl's viewpoint in alternating sections, the novels attempts to portray the emerging feminist consciousness of the era, where rock music, on the vanguard of progress artistically, remained mired in male chauvinism. The girls attempt to integrate themselves into the band, singing and playing instruments, while being the "wives" of the male "stars." The plot describes the off-the-cuff and impromptu nature of a barely successful rock band attempting to make it big. The changing values of the era are reflected in extra-marital sex, drugs, and homemade bombs. The most interesting device is the evolving voices of the three young women as they navigate the uncharted territories of women's new roles in a life fraught with undercurrents of violence amidst social change. These handmaidens learn to grow into assertive women.