Text and photographs present the story of the Harvey girls who were waitresses in the Fred Harvey's chain of restaurants along the Santa Fe railroad. They were true pioneers, about one hundred thousand of them, who chose to travel West and provide high quality meals for railroad passengers.
When eleven-year-old Mo's mother dies in an accident and Mo's devastated father deals with the loss by moving the family to a new town and starting a new life as the owner of a sports bar, Mo must leave her much loved neighborhood on Fox Street to live in an apartment above the "cursed" Corkey's Tavern.
Forced to work in her unpleasant uncle's horrible restaurant, a Parisian girl finds comfort and companionship in a shop nearby that sells otherworldly foods prepared by a mysterious cook and her cat.
Third-grader Dessert's love of treats leads to a change in her large family's dinner routine, then an awful mistake, and later a true sacrifice after her teacher, Mrs. Howdy Doody, urges students to march to the beat of their own drums.