Her grandmother calls her “unnatural,” and as she gets older, she begins to feel more comfortable dressed as a man. Adding even greater complications to an already unlikely career path is that Charlotte’s gender identity and her biological sex are not the same.
In alternating chapters, Key presents Charlotte’s struggle to achieve her dream of being a movie director in 1940s Los Angeles. This unlikely treasure hunt leads Maren to the story of the camp’s namesake, Charlotte Goodman. As she solves one riddle, another takes its place - each related to Twelfth Night. On her very first day, Maren is handed a mysterious note based on a quote from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, the play chosen for the camp’s finale performance: “In my stars I am above thee but be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness THRUST upon them.” She has no idea what this means or why it was given to her, but she intends to find out, which is no easy task. Now, thanks to Hadley’s illness, she’s stuck in the middle of the woods with a bunch of theater kids she doesn’t know - and, as it turns out, possibly a ghost. “It felt as if some part of her she had unknowingly been trying to keep small was finally able to stretch out,” she thought. It only bothered her a little, growing up, to be perpetually stuck in Hadley’s shadow, but she was looking forward to things being different after her sister left home to study theater in New York. Clever, quiet Maren prefers life outside the spotlight. Theater is Hadley’s dream, not Maren’s, and the camp, nestled in the Berkshires of Massachusetts, used to be Hadley’s place to shine. They have their hands full caring for her older sister Hadley, who is in treatment for depression after dropping out of college. It was not 12-year-old Maren Sands’ idea to attend Charlotte Goodman Theater Camp, but her parents insisted. “The play’s the thing” in Twelfth, Janet Key’s lively debut novel for middle-grade readers.
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