A woman defends her children and writes a song as men hired by the coal company for which her husband works shoot bullets through the windows and walls in retaliation for his fight for the rights of workers.
After sixteen-year-old Jules loses her boyfriend she experiences complications from the pregnancy that drove him away and suddenly, some of the people closest to her are behaving as if her baby is not real.
The lives of two young people, one in Ohio and one in another dimension, intersect as they struggle to hold their single-parent families together and to explain the behavioral changes they see in their fathers.
Having been forced to act as mother and housekeeper during Mama's illness, twelve-year-old Amanda has a holiday in Memphis, far removed from the Depression drudgery of her Kentucky mountain family.
When discovered on the playground in front of the drive-in movie screen, Boulevard, a stray cat, stays in her new home for a short while before taking to the road.
