It is 1942, only a month after the United States has joined World War II, and everything is in upheaval, including the Erhardt family. Lark, her mother Arlene, and Aunt Betty are leaving Harvester, Minnesota, breaking away from their Depression-era lives to seek new opportunities in California. Arlene has boldly left her husband behind - he gambled away the money she'd saved to build the house of her and Lark's dreams. She brings Lark and Betty reluctantly in her wake.<BR>In San Diego, Arlene settles the family into a wartime housing project and secures a promising office job at Consolidated Aircraft. Betty finds work at a department store, and Lark, often left alone, navigates the bare yards of her new neighborhood. She avoids the boys who roam in threatening packs and meets Shirley, an unkempt girl who latches on to the family. Desperately homesick, Lark nevertheless attentively observes her new surroundings - the crowds who fill the plaza downtown, the junk man whose furniture they buy on credit, and the neighbors who, like her, have arrived from all across the country. Every day she waters a scraggly gardenia bush in the side yard and wonders if it will bloom.