Bud Not Buddy

Bud, Not Buddy is the story of ten-year-old Bud Caldwell, an orphan living in Flint, Michigan in 1936 during the Great Depression. Since the death of his mother, four years earlier, Bud has been living in an orphanage, as well as short stints in several foster homes. All he has of his mother are a bag of rocks and a photograph of his mother as a child.The story opens with Bud being placed with a new foster family, the Amoses, where Bud soon meets Todd Amos, their tormenting and abusive twelve year old son. After a fight with Todd, Bud is forced to spend the night in the garden shed where he is stung by hornets. After extricating himself from the shed, he runs away, and rather than returning to the orphanage, he decides to seek out Herman E. Calloway. With suitcase in hand, Bud starts walking the 120 miles to Grand Rapids, where Calloway lives.

Along the way, he is picked up by Lefty Lewis, a Railroad Porter from Grand Rapids, on his way to Flint. Bud tells him that he was running away from his home in Grand Rapids, and Lewis agrees to drive him back to Grand Rapids the following day. He sleeps in Lewis' house. Bud shows up at the club where Calloway and his band are playing and tells Calloway that he is his father. While no one believes him, and Calloway himself is hostile toward the boy, the band members take pity on him and he comes to live with Calloway and Miss Thomas, the band's vocal stylist. Bud begins to go on the road with the band, and after one concert he notices Calloway picking up a rock and writing the date and location of the concert on it. When Bud shows Calloway the rocks from his mother, which have writing on them just like Calloway's, Calloway accuses him of stealing them from his house. When the others intervene and Bud is questioned about the rocks, he explains that he got them from his mother, who, upon further questioning, is discovered to be Calloway's estranged daughter who had run away 11 years before.