When fourteen year-old Jeremy visits his incarcerated father just before Thanksgiving, he's not expecting to hear what his father has to say.  Not only is his criminal father attending a church group in prison, but he's also being transferred to a state penitentiary five hours from their hometown. This will be their last visit for a long time. Jeremy must now face life alone with his game-show addicted mother and two violent older half-brothers in the most desperate trailer park west of Texas.

Neither the town of Palmdale, nor his family seem to have anything to offer Jeremy, especially not the love and support he craves in the absence of his father.  But intrigued by his father's last comments as well as a late-night televangelism program he stumbles upon, Jeremy seeks out the help of a local church in Palmdale.

Enlisting the aid of his mother's live-in boyfriend Bill to give him a ride four miles into town, Jeremy hopes to find the same religious support his father has been getting in jail. Rudely awakened by the fact that not all churches practice what they preach, Jeremy gives up hope that anything positive will ever happen in his life. But Bill, seeing that Jeremy will eventually end up like his older half-brothers if not helped, springs into action to throw Jeremy a birthday party in the hopes of bringing him out of the doldrums.

Unfortunately, Bill's plan backfires when Jeremy's half-brothers play a sinister prank disguised as a present.  When Jeremy comes to blows with his 26 year-old brother, the family seems to be at a crossroads.  Beaten and bloodied, Jeremy must finally decide what to do to save himself from taking the same path as everyone around him.