On the last day of fifth grade, super-smart eleven-year-old Ginny learns that her father, who is a military ER doctor, is being deployed to Afghanistan, devastating news because they are already moving to another post in Maryland and Ginny depends on her father to help her manage her obsessions, panic attacks and general meltdowns; one of her obsessions is geographical facts, and somehow Ginny hopes to use her geographical knowledge to overcome her difficulties interacting with other children--including her twelve-and-a-half-year-old brother, Patrick--and find what her father calls her "true north."