Iva Giles is 10 years old, and she has spent much of her life wandering the American south with her divorced mother, always in search of a better life--at the expense of any kind of stability. All Iva wants is to see her father again--the dreamy, indigent Jameson--and one day she takes off for Mississippi, determined to find him. She finds, in the end, much more than her long-lost father....