Gramps says that I am a country girl at heart, and that is true. Thirteen-year-old Salamanca Tree Hiddle, proud of her country roots and the "Indian-ness in her blood," travels from Ohio to Idaho with her eccentric grandparents. Along the way, she tells them of the story of Phoebe Winterbottom, who received mysterious messages, who met a "potential lunatic," and whose mother disappeared. Beneath Phoebe's stories Salamanca's own story and that of her mother, who left on April morning for Idaho, promising to return before the tulips bloomed.