Billy Beede, the teenage daughter of the fast-running, no count -- and six years dead -- Willa Mae, comes home one day and finds a letter waiting for her: Willa Mae's burial spot in LaJunta, Arizona is about to be plowed up to make way for a supermarket. As Willa Mae's only daughter, Billy is heiress to her mother's substantial, but unconfirmed, fortune -- a cache of jewels that her mother's lover, Dill Smiles, is said to have buried with her. Dirt poor, living in a trailer with her Aunt June and Uncle Roosevelt behind a gas station in a tumbleweedy Texas town, and pregnant with a fatherless child, Billy sees hope and opportunity in the buried treasure. So she steals Dill's pickup truck and, with her Aunt and Uncle in tow, heads out for Arizona with Dill in hot pursuit. While everyone agrees it's only polite to speak of getting mother's body and moving her to a proper resting place -- it's well understood that digging up Willa Mae's diamonds and pearls will make the whole trip a little more worth while.