Hope and her aunt Addie have had to move again, leaving the Blue Box Diner in Brooklyn behind when Gleason Beal steals their money and their dream of owning their own restaurant. Now, they work at the Welcome Stairways, a diner in Mulhoney, Wisconsin where Addie is the cook and Hope is a waitress Hope expects America’s Dairyland to be “basic bovine boredom,” but instead she enters into a world of politics as G.T. Stoop, her new boss who has leukemia, declares that he is running for mayor. Hope sees political corruption up close and learns the power that teenagers have when they band together behind a good cause. She also meets Braverman, an extremely cute grill man as G.T. becomes the father she has wanted all her life.