Frances Lacey, a widow, works at a factory that produces potato chips. She is fired when one of the men gropes her, and she hits him in return. The same day, her son is brought home by the police, for stealing change from payphones, but they don't press charges. Shortly after this, Frances decides that Los Angeles is not the place to raise a family. She packs the kids up, sells everything they can't carry, and starts driving. She figures she'll know where she's going when she sees it. Their meager resources get them as far as Hankston, Idaho, where Frances spots the unfinished frame of a wood house a few miles outside town, across the road from Moon's Nursery. Finding that the proprietor of the nursery, Mr. Munimura, is the owner of the property, though virtually penniless, Frances proposes to buy it from him in exchange for work by her and her children, whom she collectively calls the "Lacey Tribe".