Rebecca Randall is one of seven fatherless children but is full of fun & strange ideas. She leaves her family at Sunnybrook Farm & goes to live with her two aunts in Riverboro. There she goes to school for the first time embarks on a madcap scheme to sell soap nearly runs away befriends the kindly stagecoach driver Jeremiah Cobb & with ' Mr Aladdin' helps repair her family's fortunes.