When ten year old Rainey Dougherty's mother is hospitalized for mental instability, Rainey and her 4 siblings find themselves at the mercy of Merle, their irreverently funny and bitter aunt, who comes up to the country from the Bronx with her troubled fourteen year old daughter Joan, to take care of that goddamn bunch of nuts she knows these children are.

For Rainey, this starts a summer of enlightenment where she learns about the realities of life through the eyes of innocence. We chart Rainey's course through a year that is often harrowing, sometimes hilarious, but always hopeful. Merle's voice is the one clear note in Rainey's head as she begins a season without her mother, a season that brings both Joan and Rainey again and again to the brink of disaster.

Time and again it is the force of Merle's voice, stale and tough as old gum, that Rainey chews on and eventually swallows, that rescues her from disaster. But when Merle is silenced, and Joan is lost, Rainey is left to take her first step outside the confines of her family, unguided, and into her own future. It is this step that will make all the difference in her life, a step forward that she will never forget.