After being abandoned by her mother as a baby to a children's’ home in London, Hetty Feather lives with kind-hearted foster parents until she is five, when she has to return to the children's’ home. Hetty faces daily battles with the mean matron Bottomley and the in-house bully, Sheila, but through it all, she makes friends and discovers untold stories and truths about her past as she searches for her real mother.