Bonnie Shaster, fourteen years old and recently orphaned,has happily come to live with her mother's family in Seattle,never expecting to find such chaos. Her charming, haplessrelatives have been forced to take in gentleman boarders tomake ends meet. The progressive ladies crusade for causes likewomen's suffrage, yet they are quite inept at managing thehousehold. Money is always a problem and the boarders arefrequently at odds with one another and with the household ofwomen, not one of whom knows how to cook. Yet whenhandsome young boarder Carson Young, a blind veteran of theGreat War, jokingly warns Bonnie to run for her life,she knows she isn't going anywhere.

After escaping from the misery of living with herdisagreeable aunt, Bonnie has found a home where sheis happy and where she is valued-often for taking chargeof problems that threaten to become disasters. And as sheties her wishes on scraps of paper to the family's"ornament tree," Bonnie dares to believe that her newhome and the people in it are the beginning of a new lifewhere her fondest wishes can come true.