Joey and his little sister Mary Alice aren't too excited about their first annual visit to Grandma Dowdel's sleepy country town in Illinois. How will an old lady possibly keep them entertained for a whole week?

But from their first glimpse of a dead body in her front room, Joey and Mary Alice know they had Grandma all wrong. As she chases a gang of rowdy bully boys out of town, catches the local sheriff off-guard in his underwear and finds time for a little poaching, she proves herself one formidable old lady.