Vada Sultenfuss is obsessed with death. Her mother is dead, and her father runs a funeral parlor. She is also in love with her English teacher, and joins a poetry class over the summer just to impress him. Thomas J., her best friend, is "allergic to everything", and sticks with Vada despite her hangups. When Vada s father hires Shelly, a makeup expert, in his funeral parlor, and begins to fall in love with her, Vada is outraged and does everything in her power to split them up.

Volunteering to drive his girl friend s son home for Thanksgiving to Chicago from his boarding school in Georgia, little does Dutch expect the picaresque adventures in store for him. When a blunt, down-to-earth construction worker takes to the road with an insufferable twelve-year-old snob (desperately insecure under the surface) who doesn t approve of him in the least, quite a bit must happen before they can reach their destination as friends-- or, for that matter, get home at all.