Four best friends, with four different personalities, have issues of their own. Deidre is fascinated by her sexuality and has many boyfriend problems. Madge is unhappily overweight and has overprotective parents. Annie boozes and does drugs, and runs away from her abusive father, a policeman. Jeanie has to take care of them and is fighting with her divorced mother. The only way to loosen up, and forget all the bad things happening in their lives, is to party and have fun. Jeanie is ready to grow up and wants to stop acting like a child. Annie is the worst of them all and Jeanie is worried about her the most. She risks her neck more than once trying to keep Annie clean and free from trouble. But Annie's unstable behavior and flare ups keeps everyone on edge.

A girl returns from a failed Hollywood career to her West Texas home, to say good-bye to her dying mother, only to find an eccentric, ex-pro football player, selling postcards and singing to his horse, while taking care of a sister she never knew and past she tried to leave behind.

It's the Great Depression. In the process of robbing a bank of $10,000, Ben Harper kills two people. Before he is captured, he is able to convince his adolescent son John and his daughter Pearl not to tell anyone, including their mother Willa, where he hid the money, namely in Pearl's favorite toy, a doll that she carries everywhere with her. Ben, who is captured, tried and convicted, is sentenced to death. But before he is executed, Ben is in the state penitentiary with a cell mate, a man by the name of Harry Powell, a self-professed man of the cloth, who is really a con man and murderer, swindling lonely women, primarily rich widows, of their money before he kills them. Harry does whatever he can, unsuccessfully, to find out the location of the $10,000 from Ben. After Ben's execution, Harry decides that Willa will be his next mark, figuring that someone in the family knows where the money is hidden. Despite vowing not to remarry, Willa ends up being easy prey for Harry's outward ...

When a teenager receives a mysterious letter in the mail, she sets out to find the author. It's a journey that will change her life forever.