Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death.

It’s the summer before Miss Moses “Mo” LoBeau starts the sixth grade. She wakes up to find that the Colonel (her guardian) is back but that Miss Lana (her other guardian) is gone. That means it’s Mo’s duty to run the family café in their small town of Tupelo Landing, North Carolina. 

Mo goes over to her best friend Dale’s house to tell him that she can’t go fishing with him because she has to open the café, and Dale is disappointed because he managed to “borrow” Mr. Jesse’s boat. He comes to help Mo out anyway. They open the café early in the morning, and the first patron is Mr. Jesse, followed by the mayor. Several other people trickle in, and Mo knows all of them. She isn’t allowed to use the stove, so she serves peanut butter and banana sandwiches and Mountain Dew. The café gets busy throughout the day, and she and Dale work hard to keep it going. Seven minutes after noon, a strange man wearing a gold badge walks into the café.