It's 1969 and eight-year-old Elizabeth and her mother Margaret make a daring escape from their hard life in a factory town in Ontario's cheese belt. Stealing a school bus and slipping across the US border, they believe they are destined for greatness--and when Elizabeth discovers she can tell the fortunes of the desperate in roadside diners, she knows she's found their ticket to a better life in California.

But when strangers appear with the promises of utopia, Margaret drifts into the deranged world of a doomsday cult, and young Elizabeth has no choice but to follow, watching as her mother slips further into a life of apocalyptic fervor.

Thrilling, sharp, gutting, and uplifting, Once Upon an Effing Time is a story of 1970s counterculture, shifting realities, the unpredictable behavior of love, and the struggle to leave the past behind.