When Arthur Benjamin steps from a Greyhound bus in Savannah, Georgia, he is immediately robbed by an affable street magician named Hamby Cahill. It is Hamby's first act of thievery and the remorse of it so overwhelms him that he finds lodging for Arthur. There, Arthur finds his family - an ex-con shoplifter, a disgruntled seamstress, a young artist suspected of being a hooker, and a former boxer.