An eight-year-old trouble-maker must protect his home from a pair of burglars when he is accidentally left home alone by his family during Christmas vacation.

Two New Yorkers are accused of murder in rural Alabama while on their way back to college, and one of their cousins--an inexperienced, loudmouth lawyer not accustomed to Southern rules and manners--comes in to defend them.

A young girl, on the threshold of her teen years, finds her life turning upside down, when she is accompanied by an unlikely friend.