At the age of 8, Vaselinetjie is taken away by the Welfare and send to the orphanage. It's a strange, hard, dangerous world of rebel children, fierce house mothers,friends, first loves and where she finally finds true self-acceptance.

A teenage beauty queen is flung into swift adulthood when her father assumes a new identity: Father Christmas. Juggling a crazy father, an impressionable kid brother and a growing romance, Nonnie has to redefine her own meaning of family.