When Caddie and Hugh, the two younger Clavering children, discover to their horror that their home has been destroyed and that their mother has gone off with another man, they just refuse to accept it. Determined to bring their mother home, they leave their lonely London flat and begin their long journey to an unknown part of Italy. Once Hugh and Caddie, tired and miserable, arrive, they realize that their task is not the simple one they had thought. The suspense rises to great tension as they battle, against seemingly insurmountable odds, the man who has destroyed their home, whom their mother loves, and whom they, quite without meaning to, begin to respect and like.