A young girl grows up in a small town in the Idaho Panhandle where people know everybody's business. Her father is from a pillars-in-the-community family, her mother a miner's daughter. After years as a dedicated elementary school teacher, her mother becomes as unconventional as they come, eventually going to prison. Left to her own devices at 11, Roberta raises herself, marries young (and happily), gets a college degree and a job as a college administrator, raises two great kids of her own, and deals with an MS diagnosis. As Roberta comes into her own as an adult, she softens towards her mother and begins to see the many gifts in their relationship. One of those gifts was accountability, when her mother paid the piper, fully accepting the consequences of her self-indulgent behavior, manufacturing phony stock certificates to produce cash she freely gave away, and letting everyone know that she did.