In this heroic odyssey of survival, thirteen-year-old Dicey Tillerman fights to keep her sibings together after she and James, age eleven, Maybeth, nine, and Sammy, only six, are abandoned by their mother in a mall parking lot. In desperation they are determined to avoid foster care, the kids strike out for Maryland, where their estraged - and rumored crazy - grandmother Abigail (Anne Bancroft) lives. So begins a sometimes heartbreaking and other times heartwarming struggle between four homeless children looking for their place in the world and an embittered old woman who can't see that she's looking for the very same thing.