At a time in the 1950s when America is a little more innocent, two children and their flamboyant aunt head toward California in a Buick Skylark convertible. Pauly Mahoney knows if she doesn’t fret about her family, no one will. Certainly not her unstable mother or fun-loving father, who can’t seem to make ends meet without her help. It’s Pauly’s job to hold the family together—until a hot summer night in Tulsa, Oklahoma, when her parents are killed in a freak carnival accident and Pauly’s world turns upside down. Abandoned by indifferent relatives, Pauly and her brother are headed nowhere…until their unfamiliar Aunt Nora volunteers to take them in. No one seems to care that their unlikely guardian angel is a free-spirited, chain-smoking movie extra with no visible means of support. But when Aunt Nora points her stylish car toward California, Pauly and her brother find themselves on a rollicking cross country journey with a woman who will show them that promises can be kept through laughter and tears—and whose open heart has room for both of them and more.“The most appealing heroine since Scout Finch… I'm telling everyone I know: don't miss this one!”—Cassandra King, author of The Same Sweet Girls