A computer expert embezzles half a million dollars and races off to Reno to start anew. Unfortunately, en route, he picks up a pair of hitchers and ends up entangled with a crazed couple who commandeer his car and leave him alone in the desert to die. As soon as he can, he hits the road to get revenge and to find his money before they do.

A story centered on a transitional point in the life of Ave Maria Mulligan, the heart of her community in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia.

A paranoid schizophrenic woman finds treatment to her mental illness after 18 years of suffering.

An airline pilot and his wife are forced to face the consequences of her alcoholism when her addictions threaten her life and their daughter's safety. While the woman enters detox, her husband must face the truth of his enabling behavior.

Novalee Nation is a 17-year-old Tennessee transient who has to grow up in a hurry when she's left pregnant and abandoned by her boyfriend on a roadside, and takes refuge in the friendly aisles of Wal-Mart. Eventually, some eccentric but kindly strangers 'adopt' Novalee and her infant daughter, helping them buck the odds and build a new life.

A small-town father is forced to make difficult, heartbreaking decisions in order to save his two daughters.

A forlorn teenager abandoned in New York City spirals out of control, from a troubled kid to an accidental addict, after he mistakes the welcoming embrace of a Lower East Side drug dealer for the love of family.