Josie is an imaginative 9 year-old living in Bratt, Tennessee. Her 4 grade teacher integrates maps and social studies with the folktales she reads during story time. Josie longs to see the magic in stories about Aladdin and Sinbad with her eyes and not just her imagination. When her father loses his job in Tennessee, the family moves to Michigan while he works in an automobile factory. Although homesick, Josie and her younger brother Will adjust to their new school. Before Christmas their father is laid off. While driving home to Tennessee their car skids on an icy patch of road; a tragic accident. Traveling the rest of the way by bus, Josie rereads the story about shipwrecked Sinbad and discovers what he, she, and we, discover during our journeys home.