Eleven-year-old tomboy Livie is sure that she is responsible for the accident that has put her mother into a coma, so, trying to make amends, she travels through the Louisiana swamps to get a spell that will make her mother well again.
Even though Feliciana is her grandfather's favorite, he refuses to allow her to go alligator hunting with him, so one night she sneaks out and surreptitiously joins the hunt anyway.