After her father remarries, twelve-year-old Stacy runs away in search of her real mother, only to be befriended by a wizened old woman who lives alone in the desert.
When 12-year-old Stacy gets fed up with her pregnant stepmother and leaves her Oklahoma panhandle home, she is led by a pair of dogs, one about to whelp, to the home of Old Ella, who gives her a new perspective on life.
