When authorities threaten to take Sophie, twelve, from Charles who has been her guardian since she was one and both survived a shipwreck, the pair goes to Paris to try to find Sophie's mother, and they are aided by Matteo and his band of "rooftoppers." Sophie may have survived a shipwreck as a baby, but her life began when an eccentric but loving bachelor brought her home. When a child services organization threatens to remove Sophie, she and Charles flee to Paris in search of her long-lost mother.