Sara Crewe is a wealthy, precocious and loving child. When her widowed father, Captain Crewe, is called to war, Sara is sent from the carefree environs of her home in India to a strict New York boarding school--under the stern, disapproving stewardship of its headmistress, Miss Minchin. Sara must use her inner resources of warmth, imagination and principle to overcome hardship when she suddenly is informed that her father has been lost in battle and that she is penniless and alone in the world. Miss Minchin's harsh treatment of Sara is tempered by the girl's friendship with her classmates, the bashful servant girl, Becky, and Miss Minchin's perpetually flustered sister, Amelia. Although she is unaware that she is under the watchful and protective eye of Ram Dass, the mysterious Indian manservant who lives next door, Sara ultimately discovers that she was never really far from home.