In the summer of 1960, when six-year-old Linda Parker moves from New York to Texas, she expects to enter the world of her cowboy idols and get a horse, like the Lone Ranger's Silver or Roy Rogers' Trigger. Instead, her family moves into an Amarillo apartment complex and buys her a bird. As the "Hartz Mountain Master Radio Canaries" chirp "Return to Sorrento," Linda dreams of a proper pet and schemes escape from the town she considers "no man's land." She discovers real life isn't like television, but a quirky mixture of frustration and success, grief and joy.