Anchor plot: Florida, 1969. 8-year-old Tommy Wheeler is incorrectly seen as mentally-impaired by many of the local townspeople. Tommy lives alone with his skanky mother, Connie Mae, a sex shop owner. This emotionally troubled child also struggles with painful memories of his abusive, estranged father, Tom, whose mistreatment he recreates in a self-flagellating manner by systematically subjecting himself to the sadism of the 12-year-old local bully, Bear Hadley. While the town barber, George Burgess, a psychotically religious zealot, obsesses over Connie Mae, Tommy fantasizes about watching the town fireworks from atop the local lighthouse. The boy finally realizes this dream, but when he descends, he happens upon a shocking discovery that changes his world forever by bringing a permanent end to his childhood innocence.

Plot A: When orphaned Jimmy Mason is taken in by his Aunt Emma and Uncle Henry, he meets their boarder, Matt Kelly, who impresses the young man with his boastful swagger and alleged political connections, although in reality he's a bootlegger.
The boy's life is disrupted when, as one of Kelly's hired hands, he refuses to identify his boss during a police raid and is sentenced to three years of hard labor in reform school, where he befriends a sickly boy named Shorty, who in helping Jimmy, eventually is sent to solitary confinement.
When Jimmy realizes his new pal is seriously ill and desperately needs medical attention, he escapes and goes to Kelly and Kelly's girl friend, Peggy Gardner, for help. Peggy contacts newspaper columnist Frank Gebhardt, who is anxious to expose the conditions at the state industrial school.
The authorities find Jimmy at Gebhardt's office, but before they can apprehend him Kelly admits his involvement in the bootlegging operation and the boy is set free. He discovers Shorty has died, victimized by a corrupt system.

Plot B: Set in the mid-1960s, the story centers on ten-year-old Harriet Frankovitz, a lonely outcast who lives with her mother and older sister Gwen in a dilapidated New Hampshire motel with cabins shaped like tipis her mother received as part of her divorce settlement. Harriet has a strong desire to escape her dull existence by means of any one of a number of creative ways - a magic carpet she tries to fly off the roof, on board a flying saucer she anxiously awaits in the schoolyard, through a tunnel she has been digging to China, or by attaching helium-filled balloons to a lawn chair. Mrs. Frankovitz is a bitter alcoholic with a propensity for driving on the wrong side of the road, while Gwen has sexual encounters with a series of men in vacant rooms. Terminally ill Leah Schroth is en route to an institution where she plans to admit her intellectually disabled son Ricky when their car breaks down near the motel, and the two stay there while waiting for the vehicle to be repaired. Mrs. Frankovitz is killed in an automobile accident, and Harriet discovers Gwen is her biological mother. The distressed girl and her new friend run away and set up house in an abandoned caboose concealed beneath dense foliage in the woods. When Ricky becomes ill, Harriet is forced to seek medical assistance for him. Once he recovers, his mother sets off with him to complete their interrupted journey, leaving Gwen and Harriet to learn to interact in their new roles of mother and daughter.