SLUMP

Salisbury was not Penny's mother's first choice of universities. And if Penny was honest, she was not her mother's prime candidate for a "perfect," daughter either.

As the black sheep in her success-oriented family, Penny was ostracized in her family of certified engineers and doctors and scientists. Instead of following the life laid out for her and the overarching expectations and hopes her family instilled in her, Penny spent her childhood dreaming of traveling the world.

One fateful day, her days of pondering over an uncertain future seemed to have ended when Penny is introduced to her first love, the violin. Thinking Penny is actually a late-blooming prodigy, her mother immediately signs Penny up for lessons and has her private teacher sign her up for an audition to join a statewide symphony orchestra. But hope is snatched under her nose when her results fail to reach the cut required. When Penny is taken out of her private music lessons and her violin is sold without consent, she realizes there are no such things as second chances in her family and gives up entirely on the violin.

But many things can change in three years; especially after she rejects her mother's deposition to send her to an international boarding school and moves to Ocean City to study at the University of Salisbury.

Not long after enrolling, she encounters a passion-starved professor, a theater troupe of misunderstood souls, and a boy who paints over her bleak life like the artist he is.