In segregation-era Lackawanna, NY, Rachel "Nanny" Crosby is a an incredible woman whose boarding home is a place where drifters and dreamers, eccentrics and excessives can always find a hot meal and a new start. Into this world comes Junior, a little boy Nanny takes in and raises as her own. Nanny's love and the stories from her boarders' damaged and haunted pasts irrevocably change the young boy's life.