Ten-year-old Beans Curry, a member of the Keepsies, the best marble playing gang in Depression-era Key West, Florida, engages in various schemes to earn money while "New Dealers" from Washington, D.C., arrive to turn run down Key West into a tourist resort.

En 1935, cuando su madre consigue un trabajo de limpieza para una mujer a la que no le gustan los niños, Turtle, de once años, es enviada a quedarse con parientes que nunca conoció en el lejano Key West, Florida. In 1935, when her mother gets a job housekeeping for a woman who does not like children, eleven-year-old Turtle is sent to stay with relatives she has never met in far away Key West, Florida.