Mississippi Delta: For many long years, Russell Gaines sat in prison for driving drunk and killing a teenager. But on the morning of his release, he discovers that not everyone believes he has paid for his crime. On the same day, a woman named Maben and her young daughter Annalee trudge along the interstate, desperate and exhausted, and pay their last few dollars for a room for the night – a night that will end with Maben wandering through the darkness with a gun in her hand and a deputy lying dead on the road. At dawn, the paths of Russell and Maben cross, and the ex-convict must decide whose life he will save: his own or that of the woman and her daughter...