Gram initially recovers but later suffers a stroke outside Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Gram and Gramp’s childlike enthusiasm and general disregard for consequences also result in several misadventures, the most serious of which involves a venomous snake biting Gram.
They therefore set out from Sal’s new home in Euclid, Ohio (where she and her father moved after Sugar’s death) and follow the bus route westward, stopping at sights like Lake Michigan and Old Faithful along the way. This state of denial is the impetus for Sal’s own journey while she hopes to bring her mother home, her father’s parents (“Gram” and “Gramps”) hope that showing Sal her mother’s final resting place will at last provide her with some closure.
When Sal learned of her mother’s death, she refused to accept it, and in fact conceals it from readers for most of the novel. She planned to visit a cousin while working through this trauma, but the bus she was on crashed just outside of Lewiston, killing everyone on board except the woman Sugar was sitting next to: a nurse named Margaret Cadaver.
Roughly a year before, Sal’s mother Sugar had left her husband (John), her daughter, and the family farm in Bybanks, Kentucky after suffering a stillbirth. In the novel’s frame narrative, Sal recounts the story of her recent road trip to Lewiston, Idaho. The novel tells the parallel stories of two 13-year-old girls: Salamanca (“Sal”) Hiddle and Phoebe Winterbottom.
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