Sophia, who would like to be known as Sophie, has attended far too many schools over her junior high years. Now, in 1974, stinging from constant rejection because her alcoholic father is doing time for murder (unjustly convicted as Sophie sees it), she is determined to forge a new identity as she begins yet again at a new school. She and her beautiful, dramatic, Bulgarian mother decide to pretend that Sophie's father has died. If only they can get their story straight, everyone will sympathize with them, but of course, the devil is in the details.