It is the early 1960s, and 13-year-old Cassandra Fitzpatrick is growing up in a household full of waifs and strays and general misfits. Despite her unorthodox home life, however, she is generally content until something happens to her that turns her life upside-down. Cass's unhappiness deepens when she wins a scholarship to boarding school and is torn away from all she knows and loves especially her adored, if wildly unconventional, mother. In time, Cass begins to settle down, but accustomed though she is to her mother's eccentricities, even she is not prepared for the announcement Mrs. Fitzpatrick is about to make.