A recently widowed grandmother is determined to grant her husband's last wish, that she set his ashes free over the idyllic bluff they called Annie's Point. When her son Richard refuses to let his mother make the two thousand-mile trip, she takes off anyway with her free-spirited granddaughter in tow.

Frank Adler is a single man raising a child prodigy, his spirited young niece Mary, in a coastal town in Florida. Frank's plans for a normal school life for Mary are foiled when the seven-year-old's mathematical abilities come to the attention of Frank's formidable mother Evelyn, whose plans for her granddaughter threaten to separate Frank and Mary.

Carolina, who is named after the state for which she was born in, tries to escape from her wildly eccentric family in search of a life of love and normalcy. Her sisters, Georgia and Maine, live with her grandma in a rather unconventional fashion. Her neighbor, Albert, writes romance novels for a living and writes a book "for Carolina". Carolina, herself, has a job as the producer of a television show, but loses her job when her hysterical sister calls...