In 1934, Nora Cassidy's sharecropper husband takes his own life. She is left destitute, and with an eight-year-old daughter to support. When her Uncle Alonzo invites them to come and live with him and his wife Myrtle, she jumps at the chance. She sets out on a five hundred mile journey to the Texas Panhandle in a 1928 open-cab Ford pickup. Trouble follows her. When she and Dede stop in an isolated spot to have lunch, she loses her pickup key.
Cliff Windom is running for his life from a man who will shoot him on sight. He crosses paths with Nora and offers to help her start her pickup if she will let him travel with her and Dede.
They begin a journey that will change all three of their lives forever.