Eleven-year-old Jacob Tyrone DeShawn (with his alter ego, Jakeman, a comic book character he draws) and his 16-year-old sister, Shoshona, join a number of children regularly to take a ten-hour-bus ride to Wickham Prison to visit their mom and other women incarcerated there. The children include Harlan, whose mother died in prison when the authorities ignored her appendicitis; Dayton and his little sister Carolyn, who doesn't speak; and Lydia, Clarice and Rochelle, the singing girls in their boas. On Mother's Day, the children take an eventful trip, which begins with their substitute bus driver, Mr. Nothing, verbally abusing them, getting himself drunk, and leaving them on the bus to fend for themselves. As Jacob has been regularly writing the state governor, asking him to pardon their mother, Jake convinces the others to head to a seniors' home where he expects the governor to visit his own mother. Although the governor isn't there, they meet Mildred, the governor's mom, who helps the kids crash the governor's Mother's Day golf tournament and bring media attention to the injustices they endure, if only to provide them with some small glimmer of hope.