Terminally bored recent widower Si Foster, an eccentric puzzle of a man (and self-proclaimed eggplant connoisseur) is terribly lonely. His daughter Sonya was kidnapped two years prior and, for reasons unknown to her, the ransom somehow wound up never being paid. As the Fourth of July approaches and Si finds that he has virtually no one with whom to celebrate the holiday, he finally gets up the nerve to contact the kidnappers through their intermediary. He agrees to pay the ransom with an inheritance he was left and is soon reunited with her...only to find that she has accepted her captors as her new family, and has grown to love them as such. Alas, the oddball Si is clueless and inept in interacting and trying to re-establish his relationship with her. But Sonya has a few tricks up her sleeve to get him to reveal why she was seemingly abandoned two years ago...with the help of some strange cargo she has brought back home with her!