Eleven-year-old Verbena Polter gets through a difficult summer of turbulent emotions and the revelation of a disturbing family secret with an odd new friend who believes she is the ghost of a girl who drowned many years before.
Firm in her belief that her missing parents will return to the bombed-out circus camp where she lives with a group of "leftover" children, ten-year-old Babo has no desire to leave her war-torn country.