Plot+Summary

One day, Marietta Greer packs a few belongings into her 1955 VW bug and leaves her mother and her small town of Pittman, Kentucky, to drive across the United States. She doesn’t really know where she is going, or why she is going at all, but she goes with determination and spirit. On the way, she stops in a town called Taylorville and decides to change her name to Taylor. She is also given a small child, whom she nicknames Turtle, by a strange Native American woman sitting in a bar. Taylor discovers the toddler had been abused and takes her with her to Tuscon, Arizona, the final city on her journey.  There she meets Lou Ann and Dwayne Ray, Estevan and Esperanza, Mattie, and a medley of other characters. Through her relationships with the people in Tucson, she learns the importance of friendship and the blessings of motherhood. She helps Lou Ann get over her ex-husband. She also helps Estevan and Esperanza, two fugitives from Guatemala, find a home on a Native American reservation. Finally, she discovers that Turtle’s real name is April, and she adopts her as her very own daughter to love forever.