In the summer of 1972, an awkward widower attempts to raise his precocious 11-year-old daughter, who finds a strong kinship with a boy from her neighborhood.
In the spring of 1974, nearly two years following the events of the first film, Vada Sultenfuss sets out on a quest to learn more about her deceased biological mother. She has matured from the spunky, eleven-year-old hypochondriac to a lively, yet more serious teenager seeking independence. Her father Harry and his new wife Shelly DeVoto, whom he dated in the first film, are expecting a baby. They still live in the Sultenfuss funeral home in Madison, Pennsylvania, while Harry's brother Phil has moved to Los Angeles, where he works as a mechanic. Gramoo, Vada's paternal grandmother, has since died. Vada still has her mood ring from two years earlier and wears it in memory of her late best friend Thomas J., who died retrieving it for her after she had lost it.