Maddie is an adventurous but emotionally scarred eleven-year old girl who as been in and out of Gladstone’s Foster Care facility since being abandoned as a young child. Afraid of being rejected again, Maddie struggles against adoption and attaches to the facility instead, determined to making it her permanent home. Caring for Maddie are her caseworker and psychiatrist whose failure to place her in a more permanent home environment will result in her being sent away to an intensive care facility, harming her irrevocably. Creating more problems for Maddie is Felix Mustard, a rebellious seventeen-year old bully who has been at Gladstone’s as long as Maddie, and who is as desperate to escape as she is to stay.
As Maddie'‘s dream for a stable life at Gladstone's crumbles around her, a mysterious old blind man named Virgil appears offering her a solution to her troubles. But before he can explain he disappears just as mysteriously, leaving her an amazing lamp that allows its holder to walk through walls. Enlisting the unlikely company of Mustard, who secretly wants to use the lamp for his own escape, they set out to find Virgil in the hope he can help solve her troubles. When they fail to find him, Mustard persuades her to give up her hopes of returning to Gladstone’s and instead stay with him to exploit the lamp for a life of independence.
Before they can use the lamp to exploit their new life together, Mustard is kidnapped by the same people who took Virgil, leaving Maddie stranded and alone. Using the lamp and her own ingenuity, Maddie tracks down and confronts their pursuers: Quentin and Carlyle, two hired thugs, and a dangerously unpredictable young man called Jasper. They work for the intimidating Janice Galloway who for thirty years has been searching for the lamp on behalf of a long forgotten company that claims to have built 'Hightower Lamp of Marvels' a century before.
Relying only on her wits, Maddie tricks her captors and engineers their escape. Unleashing the power of the Lamp, Virgil transports them to safety and asks the kids to help him protect the thing their pursuers are truly after—a magical Lighthouse vastly more powerful than the Lamp itself. Virgil reveals himself to be the last in the line of Lighthouse Keepers charged with keeping it hidden after its inventor, Eugene Hightower, disappeared into the light a hundred years before. Maddie learns of her own role in the saga of the Lamp and the Lighthouse, how she and the old man are connected by her own mysterious past, and how she may be the next Lighthouse Keeper.
When it seems as though Maddie has finally found her true home and family with Virgil and Mustard living in the Lighthouse, Jasper descends upon them with his own mysterious lamp and the fight for the Lighthouse begins. In a turn of events that almost costs all their lives, Maddie turns the lighthouse over to Jasper when his own childhood connection with the lamp is revealed. In spite of the danger this puts them in, Maddie's sacrifice and faith in Jasper inspires him to join them and keep the lighthouse hidden from Janice Galloway and the powers she serves.
Understanding how his own lack of faith in himself and humanity nearly lead him to destroy the lighthouse and all their lives, Virgil makes amends with Jasper and reveals him to be the true Lighthouse Keeper. Together they will work to keep the lighthouse safe for when it can be used to bring good to the world. Maddie and Mustard are asked to stay on and remain part of the family.
In their experience with the lamp, Mustard learns he is not ready to go out into the world as an adult, and instead decides to return to Gladstone’s where he can live out the rest of his youth. Maddie accepts her need for real love and real family that can only come through adoption. As they are returned to Gladstone's, Jasper passed on his lamp to Maddie so that she can returns to them whenever she is ready.
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