When Mack Barnes arrives home from a stay in the psych ward, he is just beginning to name his troubles, and the entire family must recognize their collective wounds. After six generations of farming, Mack's family has had to call it quits - just barely saving the family home, but at the cost of Mack's brother Alex and father Taylor Sr. Mack's mother Rita perseveres by trying to take care of everyone, everyone that is, except herself. Jodie, Mack's wife, has survived so much and coped for so long that she cannot recognize her own desperation. Her only remnant of religious faith consisting of old hymns she sings just to keep herself from total distraction, Jodie seeks solace in an ill-advised affair with a local teacher. Kenzie, Mack and Jodie's fourteen year old daughter, has turned to an idealized Jesus for comfort, while Taylor, at seventeen, deals wtih his troubles by becoming a Goth, convincing his little sister that he's given over to Satan.