It's the last month of the Major League Baseball season, and promising journalist SYLVIA KERRIGAN knows if lifetime .259 hitter PAUL DEMETER finishes with a .400 batting average, someone will nab the Great Story. She aims to be that writer. She is talented but young. What qualifies her for the scoop? Easy. This unlikely hero, this man who abandoned his family? This Paul Demeter? He is her old man.

Over her mother JODIE's objections, Sylvia drops out senior year, spurns scholarships her sick S.A.T. scores secure her, and embarks upon an amazing road trip across America in her beat-up Buick to cover the ballplayer she hates (loves?) and expose him as a fraud. Along the way, she aligns in dubious union with stowaway and lone wolf terrorist, AQIB; with heartbroken, courageous Jodie; and with her estranged grandfather, WILLIAM, who enters into a deadly pact with men who do not want Demeter to hit .400.