Vada (Anna Chlumsky) is only 13 years old, but she's already been through quite a bit: She's practically grown up without a mother, her best friend suffered a fatal injury, and now her father (Dan Aykroyd) has remarried, started a new family and is moving them all to Los Angeles. When Vada starts tracing her roots to fulfill a scholastic assignment, she begins researching her mother's life, only to make some startling and wonderful discoveries.