It is 1936, during the Great Depression. Ten-year-old Bud Caldwell waits for breakfast in an orphanage. The “Home” is anything but homelike; children wait in line for meals, share crowded rooms, and suffer paddling for misbehavior. A caseworker in high heels arrives to tell Bud and another orphan, six-year-old Jerry, that new temporary-care families offered to take them. The caseworker explains that Jerry will go to a family with three girls while Bud will go to the Amoses, who have a 12-year-old son. Bud consoles Jerry, telling him he will receive attention from the three girls. Bud used to cry when he received word of a changed home assignment; now, although he feels emotional, he does not cry: “But the tears coming out doesn’t happen to me anymore. I don’t know when it first happened, but it seems like my eyes don’t cry no more” (3). Because his first two foster homes were not positive experiences (in one location, an adult hit him for talking back), Bud is wary of what might happen at the Amoses.

Bud packs his only other set of clothes in his suitcase. Unlike many of the orphans at the home, Bud has his own suitcase; he checks his treasured possessions in it every night.