Hunting Down Home is told through the eyes of Morag, a seven-year-old girl who lives with her grandparents in a large house on Prince Edward Island. Separated from the mainland by a strip of water one mile wide and one mile deep, the island is home to third and fourth generation Scottish immigrants who have, through their isolation, preserved the language and way of life of their old country. Morag's mother has rebelled against the island life and abandoned it, and her, so that Morag innocently asks What's a mother?'. As she grows up she finds her mother through her own need to escape the claustrophobia of her relationship with her grandparents.