During the Depression, Gunther Grunt buys a new car with the money his wife has been saving to send their bright twelve-year-old daughter to college, beginning a chain of events that teaches the Grunts the value of their family.

In the late 1930s, H.J. Harper is intent on finding a way to help his older sister become a veterinarian and on tracking down a leopard that has escaped from the zoo in Oklahoma City where his father is working on a W.P.A. project.