Fifth-grader Cally Louise Fisher stops talking, partly because her father and brother never speak of her mother who died a year earlier, but visions of her mother, friendships with a homeless man and a disabled boy, and a huge dog ensure that she still communicates.
Eleven-year-old Nell must spend spring break in the country with an aunt and cousins she has never met, but while there she meets a mysterious, wild girl with a strange connection to horses and an uncanny understanding of Nell.