Told in diary format, 14-year-old Franny journals about the year when she is sent away from the only home she's known to live with family members she didn't know she had all while her father goes to Japan on a research trip.

Franny is a feisty 14-year-old with a gift for turning her thoughts and feelings into drawings. She lives in Montreal with her father, a sewing machine repair man by day and inventor by night. When he's invited to pursue his research in Japan, Franny is sent to a small town far away from Montreal and all her friends. She will meet a part of her family she has never heard of before and will have to adapt to a new school and a new life. Soon, she will discover that this is the town where her mother lived before she died, when Franny was very young. This leads Franny to investigate the mystery behind her mother's death and discovers a terrible truth.